Brief report: perception of genuine and posed smiles by individuals with autism.

Researchers showed adults with autism and typical adults short video clips of smiles. Some smiles were real, some were fake.

An eye-tracking camera recorded where each person looked. After each clip, the adult picked "genuine" or "posed."

The team also asked each person about everyday social interactions to see if smile skill linked to real-life social success.

Adults with autism chose the correct smile type far less often than typical adults.

They spent less time looking at the eye region. The less they looked at eyes, the worse they did on the smile test.

Poor smile reading also tracked with lower social interaction scores in daily life.

Kleinert et al. (2007) saw the same eye-avoidance a year earlier. That study used many emotions, not just smiles. Together the papers show the eye-gap is stable across tasks.

McLennan et al. (2008) seems to disagree. They found no overall eye-gaze gap between groups for simple emotions. The key difference is task type. D used still photos and basic happy/angry faces. L used dynamic smiles that required spotting tiny eye crinkles. When the cue is subtle, eye-avoidance in autism shows up.

Hanley et al. (2015) extended the idea to live chat. Students with autism who looked less at a speaker’s eyes also missed social tricks like white lies. The smile lab result maps onto real campus life.

If your client skips the eyes, they can miss friendly intent and land in social trouble. Build lessons that reward sustained eye contact during natural smiles. Use paused video, mirrors, or FaceTime to practice spotting crow’s-feet at the outer eye. Track trials and praise longer eye looks. Better eye focus may boost both lab scores and lunch-room friendships.