Brief Report: Young adults with autism show normal attention to eye-gaze information – Evidence from a new change blindness paradigm

Other people’s eye-gaze is a powerful social stimulus that captures and directs visual attention. There is evidence that this is not the case for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), although less is known about attention to eye-gaze in adults. We investigated whether young adults would detect a change to the direction of eyegaze in another’s face more efficiently than a control change (presence/absence of spectacles). A change blindness method was used in which images showed faces as part of a complex, naturalistic scene. Results showed that adults with ASD, like typically developing controls, were faster and more accurate at detecting eye-gaze than control changes. Results are considered in terms of a developmental account of the relationship between social attention and other skills.