Reduced social prioritization: An underlying mechanism driving slower latency to look at faces in autism

Slower looking to faces is a common behavioral feature of autism central to sociocognitve development. However, the underlying mechanism explaining this phenomenon remains unclear. We investigated whether deprioritization of social information or prolonged prioritization of nonsocial information better accounted for slower latency to look at faces in a large sample of autistic (n = 269) and neurotypical (NT; n = 118) children. Participants completed an eye tracking (ET) assay in which they viewed arrays of social and nonsocial stimuli. To determine why autistic children were slower to look at faces, we computed two ET metrics that reflected either deprioritization of social information or prolonged prioritization of nonsocial information. Deprioritization of social information was operationalized by face look number (FLN), which was defined as the numerical look sequence position of the first face look. Prolonged prioritization of nonsocial information was operationalized by time per object prior, which was defined as the average looking time per nonsocial object prior to the first face look. We found that autistic children were slower to look at faces compared to NT children and had higher FLN but not time per object prior compared to NT children. FLN was associated with measures of the autism phenotype. In summary, this work suggests deprioritization of social information better explains slower latency to look at faces in autistic children than prolonged prioritization of nonsocial information, with the reduced prioritization of faces contributing to difficulties in dynamic social interaction commonly observed in autism. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).