A concern that has long been present in autism is related to gaze and why children with ASD maintain less eye contact than other children. This is even used as an early warning symptom in diagnosis.
Recent research by researchers at the Marcus Autism Center, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, and Emory University School of Medicine helps clarify this aspect of the disorder.
According to them, children with ASD do not intentionally avoid eye contact, but simply lose the importance of the social information provided by the looks of others.
Children with ASD do not actively avoid eye contact, they simply lose sight of the social importance that it brings.
Knowledge of this phenomenon is important, since understanding why children with autism make less eye contact can lead to different treatment approaches, as well as different ideas about how the brain works in autism. By knowing the true reason for the phenomenon, you can be more confident that you are addressing it in the right way.
There are two explanations for reduced eye contact in ASD. The first highlights that children with autism would avoid eye contact because they find it stressful and negative. The second, on the other hand, maintains that children with autism look less into other people’s eyes because the social signals of the eyes are not perceived as particularly meaningful or important.
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According to the researchers, this study shows that children do not actively avoid other people’s eyes, so they would not find gazes aversive. On the other hand, they observe less because they seem not to take into account the social meaning of the gaze.
The research included 86 children, with and without ASD. Children with autism watched a series of carefully made videos. Before each one, they presented a small picture to capture the child’s attention, and when they looked to where the picture was, they found that they were looking directly into the eyes of another person.
“When we did it repeatedly, we found that the toddlers with autism continued to look directly into the eyes and, like their non-autistic peers, did not move away from the eyes or try to avoid them in any way.”
However, when presented with varying levels of socially meaningful eye contact, children with ASD looked less into the eyes than their peers without the disorder.
Warren Jones, one of the researchers, said:
“These results go against the idea that young children with autism actively avoid eye contact. “They are looking less into the eyes not because of an aversion to making eye contact, but because they don’t seem to understand the social importance of eye contact.”
The research was carried out in the first moments of the autism diagnosis, that is, when the children were young. There are testimonies from young people and adults with ASD who report feeling anxious about the gaze of other people.
In this regard, Jones states that his intention is not to contradict these personal experiences. “For children with autism, social cues can be confusing, and as they grow into adults, these cues can become even more difficult to understand.”
This research highlights the opportunity to address underlying concerns as early as possible, thus allowing interventions to be directed toward the causes of children’s decreased eye contact.
The research was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, and can be read on the website
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