Examining How Types of Object Distractors Distinctly Compete for Facial Attention in Autism Spectrum Disorder Using Eye Tracking.
Autistic kids split attention evenly between people and objects, and poorer face recognition predicts even less people-looking.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team used eye-tracking to watch how kids split attention between faces and objects.
They tested autistic and typical kids on matching tasks with faces and toys on screen.
Each child tried to find the matching picture while cameras tracked where they looked.
What they found
Autistic kids looked at faces and objects the same amount. Typical kids looked longer at faces.
The autistic group also scored lower on both face and object matching tasks.
Within the autistic group, kids who were worse at recognizing faces looked at people even less.
How this fits with other research
Bradshaw et al. (2011) saw the same face-recognition gap in preschoolers, showing the problem starts early.
Wang et al. (2023) found that giving preschoolers an active game to find faces boosts eye-looking, which seems to clash with the current study's negative result. The difference is task type: active games pull attention, while passive matching does not.
Hedley et al. (2012) showed that implicit face recognition can stay intact even when explicit scores are low, helping explain why some autistic kids still show face-looking when the context is right.
Why it matters
If a child ignores faces during table-top tasks, switch to active games like face bingo or hide-and-seek with photos. Track eye contact during play, not just during testing. Use objects as rewards, but place them near your face so social looking still gets reinforced.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Previous research suggests that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have a reduced preference for viewing social stimuli in the environment and impaired facial identity recognition. METHODS: Here, we directly tested a link between these two phenomena in 13 ASD children and 13 age-matched typically developing (TD) controls. Eye movements were recorded while participants passively viewed visual scenes containing people and objects. Participants also completed independent matching tasks for faces and objects. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Behavioural data showed that participants with ASD were impaired on both face- and object-matching tasks relative to TD controls. Eye-tracking data revealed that both groups showed a strong bias to orient towards people. TD children spent proportionally more time looking at people than objects; however, there was no difference in viewing times between people and objects in the ASD group. In the ASD group, an individual's preference for looking first at the people in scenes was associated with level of face recognition ability. Further research is required to determine whether a causal relationship exists between these factors.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2020 · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2788.2010.01340.x