The relation between orienting to eye gaze and social gaze following in children with autism

Previous research indicates that adolescents with autism, unlike their typically developing peers, do not automatically orient their attention in response to directional gaze cues. The present study investigated relations between orienting responses to gaze direction on a computer-based attention task and performance on tasks that required the ability to understand or act on the social meaning of directional gaze in a lab setting. Results confirmed that children with high functioning autism (HFA) show less reflexive orienting in response to eye-gaze cues and also extend this finding to a younger sample (mean mental age = 131 months). Although individuals varied with regard to the degree to which they reflexively oriented to eye-gaze direction, for children with autism, volitional orienting to eyes was associated with delayed social gaze following. Findings suggest that computer based assessments of social attention may be useful indices of the real world social attention in children with autism.