Visual attention to competing social and object images by preschool children with autism spectrum disorder.

The team showed preschoolers with autism two pictures at once. One picture was a face. The other was an object tied to the child’s special interest, like trains or wheels.

Kids wore eye-tracking goggles. The researchers counted how long each child looked at the face versus the object.

Children with autism looked at the faces far less when their special-interest object was on the same screen.

Typical preschoolers kept looking at the faces. The difference was large on all three eye-tracking measures.

Wilson et al. (2023) repeated the setup but swapped in animal faces. Kids with autism kept looking at the animal faces even when their special objects were present. Animal faces seem to resist the pull of CI objects, while human faces do not.

Fullana et al. (2007) looks like the opposite finding: when CI objects were placed inside a play session, kids started more social bids. The key difference is context. In the 2014 study children only watched pictures. In the 2007 study they played with an adult. Passive viewing hurts face gaze, but interactive play can use the object to spark social contact.

Ferreri et al. (2011) showed the same preschool group already fixates longer on CI objects. The new work proves this fixation comes at the cost of human faces.

If you need eye contact or social attention, move the child’s special-interest objects out of sight first. Swap in animal pictures or toys when you want shared attention without losing engagement. During play, you can safely embed the object to create social moments, but keep screens and pictures of the object away when teaching face-to-face skills.