Do gaze cues in complex scenes capture and direct the attention of high functioning adolescents with ASD? Evidence from eye-tracking.

Researchers showed busy photos to high-functioning teens with ASD and to typical teens. Each photo had a person looking left or right.

Eye-trackers recorded where teens looked first and how long they stayed there.

Both groups looked at faces right away. Teens with ASD, however, took longer to move their eyes to the spot the person was gazing at.

The gaze cue did not instantly pull their attention like it did for typical teens.

Sipes et al. (2011) ran a nearly identical task and also saw slower person focus, yet the ASD teens could still name emotions and gaze direction when asked. The pattern holds: gaze knowledge is there, but eye-movement timing is off.

Rombough et al. (2013) tested younger kids and found the same split. Automatic gaze following worked, but picking eyes over arrows failed. The teen delay in Busch et al. (2010) looks like the child difficulty seen by Adrienne et al., just in an older group.

Hochhauser et al. (2018) seems to disagree. Their ASD teens spotted scene changes faster than typical peers, a positive result. The tasks differ: M et al. used passive gaze cues while Michal et al. used an active search. The positive finding does not cancel the gaze-cue delay; it just shows ASD teens can excel when the job is detection, not social following.

Do not assume a teen who looks at you is also following your gaze. Add clear verbal or pointing cues when you want them to shift attention during social-skills drills. Quick check-ins like “Look over there” can bridge the small lag the eye-tracker revealed.