Impact of conversational context on gaze patterns of autistic and non-autistic adolescents

Few studies of social gaze by autistic individuals have focused on live interactions and those studies have been limited to conversations with a single partner. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of conversational variations in cognitive load on social gaze of autistic and non-autistic adolescents while engaging with two conversation partners.

Participants engaged in a conversation where two research assistants (RAs) and the participant each shared personal memories and engaged with each other through question asking and commenting. We used eye-tracking glasses to record and analyze participants' gaze in response to two questions: One question was open-ended and referenced an unusual topic (high cognitive demand), while the other question required a simple yes or no response about a common topic (low cognitive demand).

Non-autistic adolescents gazed more at the faces of either RA than their autistic peers. Both participant groups gazed more at the face of the RA who had just asked a question. Post-hoc pairwise comparisons revealed that non-autistic participants gazed significantly more at the RA asking the yes/no question than the RA asking the open-ended question condition, but autistic participants showed no such gaze difference across question type.

These findings indicate a pattern of interactional gaze that is influenced not only by neurotype, but also by conversational features, such as the difficulty of the question and the overall social demands of interacting with more than one person.