Recent research has found that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have poorer performance and lower eye movement consistency in face recognition, which may be related to less face processing experience due to lack of social interests. Here we showed that this phenomenon was not observed in visual search tasks, as ASD individuals and matched controls had similar hit rate and precision as well as eye movement behavior when searching for either social (human) or non-social (vehicle) stimuli. However, ASD individuals had longer search time and made more and longer fixations, suggesting difficulties in identifying potential targets. This deficit was not limited to social stimuli, supporting a domain-general view of deficits in ASD. Our findings have important implications for understanding the core mechanisms underlying social-cognitive impairment in ASD.

Authors:

Alice Yang: University of Hong Kong; Janet Hsiao: Hong Kong University of Science & Technology