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Study refutes gaze aversion in autism

Recent findings indicated an association between diminished eye-looking in autism and passive insensitivity to social signals in others’ eyes, refuting the gaze aversion hypothesis about autism.

“Two hypotheses, gaze aversion and gaze indifference, are commonly cited to explain a diagnostic hallmark of autism: reduced attention to others’ eyes. The two posit different areas of atypical brain function, different pathogenic models of disability, and different possible treatments. Evidence for and against each hypothesis is mixed but has thus far focused on older children and adults,” Jennifer M. Moriuchi, MA, of Emory University, Atlanta, and colleagues wrote.

To evaluate these hypotheses, researchers collected eye-tracking data from 86 children, aged 2 years, of which 26 had autism, 38 were typically developing and 22 were developmentally delayed. Response to direct and implicit cues to look at the eyes was measured in two experiments.

When directly cued to look at the eyes, children with autism did not look away faster than typically developing children. Latency among children with autism did not vary categorically or dimensionally by degree of eye cueing.

Direct cueing had a stronger sustained effect on the amount of eye-looking among children with autism, compared with typically developing children.

When given implicit social cues for eye-looking, children with autism did not shift their gaze away nor subtly avert their gaze peripherally.

“Our results indicate that reduced eye-looking in ASD at the time of initial diagnosis is not an anxiety-related response and that it is unlikely to be caused by hyperarousal or amygdala hyperactivation. Instead, because reduced attention to the eyes appears to be due to passive insensitivity to the social signals of a conspecific, observed amygdala dysfunction in ASD is more likely due to atypical development of neural networks involving the basolateral amygdala, including circuits associated with social gaze perception and with frontal cortex-associated attribution of reward value to social interaction,” the researchers wrote. “Thus ... future studies may focus more productively on developmental specialization of social brain networks that subserve engagement with and valuation of socially relevant stimuli in hopes of better understanding and ultimately treating the neural mechanisms of gaze indifference as well as associated, and more general, impairments in social adaptive action in ASD.” – by Amanda Oldt

Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.