Trustworthiness and Dominance Personality Traits' Judgments in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Latimier et al. (2019) asked adults with autism to look at computer-made faces. They had to decide if each face looked trustworthy or dominant.

The team also watched where the adults looked on the screen. They wanted to see if gaze patterns differed from neurotypical adults.

Both groups judged trust and dominance equally well. Accuracy scores matched across autistic and neurotypical adults.

Eye-tracking showed no difference in where people looked. Time spent on eyes, mouth, and other regions was the same.

Li et al. (2016) tested kids with the same trust-from-face task and also found no group gap. The null result now spans from preschool to adulthood.

Ramachandran et al. (2010) showed adults with ASD can match faces to earlier trait guesses just as well as controls. Alice et al. replicate that intact trait processing but switch from memory to live judgment.

McGarty et al. (2018) looks like a contradiction: their autistic adults were worse at spotting real-life lies. The difference is task type—static face trust ratings versus dynamic deception videos. Static photos give extra time and clear cues; live conversation does not.

Stop targeting trustworthiness or dominance perception in social-skills goals. Your adult clients already read these cues accurately. Instead, spend time on real-time lie detection, conversation flow, and safety plans where quick decisions matter.