Cortical patterns of category-selective activation for faces, places and objects in adults with autism.
Adults with autism have weaker brain responses to faces, so teach facial recognition skills explicitly.
01Research in Context
What this study did
O'Connor et al. (2008) scanned the adults with autism and 14 typical adults.
They watched faces, places, and objects while lying in an fMRI machine.
The team measured how strongly each brain area lit up for each picture type.
What they found
Face areas in the autism group stayed dim.
The fusiform face area, superior temporal sulcus, and occipital face area all showed weaker signals.
Place and object areas worked about the same in both groups.
How this fits with other research
Spanoudis et al. (2011) adds the next piece: autistic adults also look less at eyes and mouths.
Less looking lines up with the weaker brain signals Kate found.
Hartston et al. (2023) shows the problem starts early—autistic adults fail the face-inversion test, proving the issue is perceptual, not memory.
Vabalas et al. (2016) seems to clash: typical students with high autistic traits also avoid eye contact.
The difference is the group—clinical autism versus everyday traits—so the papers actually agree that less face focus tracks with autism features.
Why it matters
Your learner may not just ignore faces; their brain may not register them as special.
Teach facial features directly instead of hoping incidental exposure works.
Use close-up photos, highlight key parts like eyes and mouth, and give extra practice trials.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Start each session with a 2-minute face-feature matching game using large, clear photos.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Autism is associated with widespread atypicalities in perception, cognition and social behavior. A crucial question concerns how these atypicalities are reflected in the underlying brain activation. One way to examine possible perturbations of cortical organization in autism is to analyze the activation of category-selective ventral visual cortex, already clearly delineated in typical populations. We mapped out the neural correlates of face, place and common object processing, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), in a group of high-functioning adults with autism and a typical comparison group, under both controlled and more naturalistic, viewing conditions. There were no consistent group differences in place-related regions. Although there were no significant differences in the extent of the object-related regions, there was more variability for these regions in the autism group. The most marked group differences were in face-selective cortex, with individuals with autism evincing reduced activation, not only in fusiform face area but also in superior temporal sulcus and occipital face area. Ventral visual cortex appears to be organized differently in high-functioning adults with autism, at least for face-selective regions, although subtle differences may also exist for other categories. We propose that cascading developmental effects of low-level differences in neuronal connectivity result in a much more pronounced effect on later developing cortical systems, such as that for face-processing, than earlier maturing systems (those for objects and places).
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2008 · doi:10.1002/aur.1