Autistic and non-autistic people interpret gaze cues in very similar ways

What is it about?

In everyday life, people often use eye movements to communicate—such as making eye contact or repeatedly looking at the same object to show interest or request help. However, eye movements can also be non-communicative, for example when someone is simply looking around. So to communicate effectively with others, we need to quickly decide whether their eye movements are intended to tell us something or not. This study investigated how autistic and non-autistic people decide whether someone is trying to communicate something or not when observing another person’s eye movements. Participants took part in an online task where they watched a virtual character (either human-like or robot-like) looking at objects on the screen. Based on the character’s gaze movements, participants had to decide whether the character was looking around or asking for help. We focused on three key features of gaze movements: (a) whether the character made eye contact; (b) whether the character looked repeatedly at the same object; (c) and how long the character looked. The results showed that eye contact and repeated looking at the same object were strong signals of communicative intent. When the virtual character displayed both cues(eye contact and repeated gaze), participants were most confident that the character was trying to communicate. Longer gaze durations slightly increased the tendency to evaluate the character’s behaviour as an act of communication. Importantly, autistic and non-autistic participants showed very similar patterns in how they interpreted these gaze cues. This challenges common assumptions that autistic people have broad difficulties in understanding social gaze. Instead, the findings suggest that autistic people are as sensitive to key gaze signals for communication as non-autistic people when these signals are presented clearly and in a context. These findings improve our understanding of social communication and may help design more intuitive artificial agents, such as virtual assistants or social robots, that use eye gaze in ways people naturally understand.

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Photo by Amir Mohammad HP on Unsplash

Photo by Amir Mohammad HP on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Being able to tell the difference whether eye movements are an act of communication or have no social meaning is important for smooth and comfortable social interaction. Our research helps us understand how people decide whether someone is trying to communicate using their eyes. Importantly, we found that autistic and non-autistic people understand eye-gaze signals in very similar ways. This challenges the common belief that autistic people generally struggle to understand social cues. Instead, the findings suggest that autistic people can interpret clear and meaningful gaze signals just as well as anyone else. Our results are also useful beyond human interaction. They can help designers of technology—such as social robots, virtual assistants, or educational tools—create systems that communicate in ways people naturally understand and feel comfortable with.

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