A study indicates that autistic children may perceive and interpret facial expressions differently.
Researchers at the University of Houston investigated social perception behaviours in nearly 400 children, including 280 with autism, by tracking their eye movements while viewing images.
The team found that children on the spectrum approached face processing in a more “exploratory” way, focusing on areas that lack social cues and require less eye contact, rather than quickly fixing their gaze on certain facial features.
In contrast, neurotypical children displayed fewer exploratory eye movement patterns.
It is well-documented that autistic children often struggle with social skills, such as maintaining eye contact during conversations.
“Our main objective in this study was to examine whether children with autism exhibit significantly different eye movement patterns during social perception,” explained Jason Griffin, a University of Houston researcher and co-author of the study published in the journal Biological Psychiatry.
From their analysis, the researchers identified two distinct eye movement patterns.
“A focused pattern involved small areas of interest on the face that attracted immediate attention. Conversely, an exploratory pattern covered wider areas of the face that included non-social elements and did not draw immediate gaze,” Griffin clarified.
The findings revealed that autistic children were more inclined to use this exploratory approach rather than the focused pattern.
“The reduced tendency to look directly at faces early during social visual processing might be a notable characteristic of autism, potentially connected to autism-related symptoms and suggesting lower visual sensitivity to facial details,” the authors noted.
They added that the results of this study could assist in enhancing facial processing abilities in autistic children.
Follow us
