The responses of autistic children to the distress of others.
Autistic preschoolers, especially low-functioning ones, skip the quick adult-face check that guides other kids in unclear moments.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers watched autistic preschoolers during real-life distress scenes. They compared them to kids with Down syndrome, language delays, and typical kids.
The team wanted to see who looked at an adult for help when something scary or unclear happened.
What they found
Low-functioning autistic children rarely glanced at adults for cues. Other groups quickly checked adult faces to decide how to feel.
The gap was biggest when the situation was fuzzy, like a stranger dropping a cup.
How this fits with other research
Leung et al. (1998) saw the same kids greet and wave less, so the missing social check is part of a wider pattern.
Sigman et al. (2003) seems to disagree — their autistic kids watched social videos just as long. The catch: videos are safe and clear, real distress is not.
Pan et al. (2025) later added eye-trackers and heart monitors. They showed autistic preschoolers skip emotional spots and stay flat-line calm, backing up the 1998 picture.
Giallo et al. (2006) found the first step is already shaky: these kids miss simple adult attention bids, so social referencing never gets started.
Why it matters
If a child does not read your face when the room gets noisy, fire drills or new toys can spiral. Prompt early: point to your calm face, label it, and wait for the look. Build this tiny step into every novel routine.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The behavior of preschool children from five groups (developmental language disordered, high-functioning autistic, low-functioning autistic, mentally retarded, and normally developing) were coded in three situations: presentation of a nonsocial orienting stimulus (an unfamiliar noise) and two social situations involving simulated distress on the part of an adult with whom they were playing. Cognitive level was correlated with level of responsiveness to stimuli only for the two retarded groups (mentally retarded and low-functioning autistic). Girls showed more prosocial behavior than boys in both social situations, independent of diagnosis. The language-disordered children showed only mild and subtle social deficits. The low-functioning autistic children showed pronounced deficits in responding in all situations. The mentally retarded and high-functioning autistic children showed good awareness of all situations, but were moderately impaired in their ability to respond prosocially; they rarely initiated prosocial behavior, but did respond to specific prompts. The behavioral feature that marked both autistic groups, in contrast to all other groups, was a lack of social referencing; they did not tend to look toward an adult in the presence of an ambiguous and unfamiliar stimulus. Results are discussed in terms of variability between and among high- and low-functioning autistic children, and implications for the core deficits in autism.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 1998 · doi:10.1023/a:1026040615628