Children with autism are characterized by milestones in joint attention (JA) skill. They fail to understand the directional cue issued by a partner (during social communication), which often results in them reciprocating inappropriately and not completing the JA bid successfully. The directional cues can be gaze-pointing, finger-pointing, etc.,…

The current study examined eye movement control in autistic (ASD) children. Simple targets were presented in isolation, or with central, parafoveal, or peripheral distractors synchronously. Sixteen children with ASD (47-81 months) and nineteen age and IQ matched typically developing children were instructed to look to the target as accurately and…

Although most researchers agree that individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) exhibit atypical attention, there is little consensus on the exact nature of their deficits. We explored whether attentional control in ASD varies as a function of motor proficiency. Nineteen children with ASD and 26 typically-developing controls completed the…

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is defined as persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction, and restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests or activities Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed., DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013). However, individuals with ASD show clearly atypical…

A common example of social differences in autism spectrum disorder is poor modulation of reciprocal gaze, including reduced duration of eye contact and difficulty detecting the aim of another's gaze. It remains unclear, however, whether such differences are specific to the social domain, or are instead indicative of broader alterations in…

To identify quantitative indicators of social communication dysfunctions, we explored the oculomotor performances in subjects with autism spectrum disorders. Discordant findings in the literature have been reported for oculomotor behavior in subjects with autism spectrum disorders. This study aimed to explore reflexive and voluntary saccadic…

The social communicative deficits and repetitive behaviours seen in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) may be affected by altered stimulus salience and reward attribution. The present study used eye tracking and a behavioural measure to index effort expenditure, arousal, and attention, during viewing of images depicting social scenes and…

Paying attention is a critical first step toward learning. For children in primary school classrooms there can be many things to attend to other than the focus of a lesson, such as visual displays on classroom walls. The aim of this study was to use eye-tracking techniques to explore the impact of visual displays on attention and learning for…

This study tested whether including objects perceived as highly interesting by children with autism during a gaze following task would result in increased first fixation durations on the target objects. It has previously been found that autistic children differentiate less between an object another person attends to and unattended objects in terms…

A study is reported which tests the proposition that faces capture the attention of those with autism spectrum disorders less than a typical population. A visual search task based on the Face-in-the-Crowd paradigm was used to examine the attentional allocation of autism spectrum disorder adults for faces. Participants were required to search for…

Background: The conclusion that children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) do not use eye gaze in the service of word learning is based on one-trial studies. Aims: To determine whether children with ASD come to use gaze in the service of word learning when given multiple trials with highly reliable eye-gaze cues. Methods & Procedures:…

Prosaccade and antisaccade errors in the context of social and nonsocial stimuli were investigated in youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; n = 19) a matched control sample (n = 19), and a small sample of youth with obsessive compulsive disorder (n = 9). Groups did not differ in error rates in the prosaccade condition for any stimulus…

Background: There is variability in the language of children with autism, even those who are high functioning. However, little is known about how they process language structures in real time, including how they handle potential ambiguity, and whether they follow referential constraints. Previous research with older autism spectrum disorder (ASD)…

Impairment of joint attention represents the core clinical features of pervasive developmental disorders (PDDs), including autism and Asperger's disorder. However, experimental studies reported intact gaze-triggered attentional orienting in PDD. Since all previous studies employed supraliminal presentation of gaze stimuli, we hypothesized that…