Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 3, 2026
09:03
Eye Tracking Young Children with Autism
Published on: March 27, 2012
Learning new faces in typically developing children and children on the autistic spectrum
C Ellie Wilson1, Romina Palermo, Jon Brock
1Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia. ellie.wilson@kcl.ac.uk
Perception
|March 24, 2011
Summary
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show differences in how they process familiar faces compared to typically developing (TD) children. Familiarity impacts face processing differently in ASD, particularly for internal facial features.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive psychology
- Developmental psychology
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Facial recognition is a complex cognitive process that improves with familiarity.
- Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is associated with differences in social cognition and face processing.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how familiarity with faces affects recognition in children with and without ASD.
- To compare face processing strategies between typically developing (TD) children and children with ASD.
Main Methods:
- Familiarized 21 TD children and 21 children with ASD with 6 identities over 3 days.
- Administered a 4-alternative forced-choice matching test using familiar and unfamiliar faces.
- Analyzed performance on whole face and facial region (internal and external) matching tasks.
Main Results:
- TD children showed familiarity advantages for whole faces and both internal/external regions.
- ASD group showed familiarity effects for whole and external faces, but not internal regions.
- ASD group had impairments matching familiarized eyes and mouths.
Conclusions:
- The process of acquiring facial familiarity differs between children with ASD and TD children.
- Children with ASD may rely more on external facial cues than internal features when processing familiar faces.
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