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Updated: Jun 3, 2026

Eye Tracking Young Children with Autism
Published on: March 27, 2012
Brief report: face-specific recognition deficits in young children with autism spectrum disorders
Jessica Bradshaw1, Frederick Shic, Katarzyna Chawarska
1Child Study Center, Yale University School of Medicine, 40 Temple Street, New Haven, CT 06511, USA.
Abstract:
This study used eyetracking to investigate the ability of young children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) to recognize social (faces) and nonsocial (simple objects and complex block patterns) stimuli using the visual paired comparison (VPC) paradigm. Typically developing (TD) children showed evidence for recognition of faces and simple objects, but not complex block patterns. Children with ASD were successful at recognizing novel objects and block patterns, but showed no evidence for face recognition. These findings suggest that young children with ASD have specific impairments in face recognition, and that they may have advantage over TD controls when processing complex nonsocial stimuli.
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