Patterns of fixation during face recognition: Differences in autism across age.
Jennifer Fedor, Andrew Lynn, William Foran and 3 others
PMID 28782371WHAT IT FOUND
Both groups looked longer and more often at eyes than mouths.
Differences between people with autism and typically developing people varied by age and task stage. Children with autism looked less at eyes, while adults showed weak mouth-looking differences.
Key findings
01During the face recognition task, people with autism and typically developing people both looked longer and more often at the eyes than at the mouth.
02Group differences in looking were not one overall pattern; they depended on age group and on whether the trial was memory or recognition.
03Face recognition improved from adolescence to adulthood in typically developing people but not in people with autism.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The study is cross-sectional, so it cannot show how any individual's looking pattern changed over time. Some results were only significant at trend level, and follow-up subgroup comparisons had relatively small numbers. The supplied text gives recruited counts and several drop reasons, but final analysed counts are in a table not visible here. The typically developing adult group was kept larger than the autism adult group, so group sizes were unequal. Valid on-screen eye data were lower in participants with autism because they blinked more. The paper does not name a single primary outcome, so the main finding depends on which fixation measure and trial phase is read. No intervention was tested, so the paper cannot show that changing fixation improves face recognition. Possible cohort effects cannot be ruled out, because younger participants may already have had social interventions.
Declared interests
No conflict of interest declaration is visible in the supplied text. Publication types indicate NIH extramural and non-U.S. government research support.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that people with autism look at mouths instead of eyes. Both groups looked longer and more often at eyes than mouths, and group differences varied by age and task phase.