Children with autism demonstrated greater visual attention to the socially salient aspects of animal images than human images

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often demonstrate visual atypicalities which are linked to reduced social inclination behaviors, such as pointing, looking at others, and shared affect. Visual atypicalities for children with ASD often include a significantly decreased attention to the eyes and direct gaze of humans. Recent research suggests that children with ASD may prefer looking at animal faces.  This study aimed to build on existing literature about visual atypicalities in children with ASD across species types while overcoming methodological limitations of existing studies in terms of consistency in dimensions and characteristics across human and animal images. Specifically, this study examined possible biases in social attention to animal faces in children with ASD when compared to human faces.

Two groups of children (age 5-12) – all from the same city in India – participated in the study: one group of children with ASD; one group of typically developing children without ASD or any other type of disability. All of the children completed an eye tracking procedure during which they viewed static images of human and animal faces. This procedure allowed researchers to collect eye tracking data across five regions of interest (left eye, right eye, eye region, face, and screen).

The typically developing children showed greater visual attention to faces than the children with ASD. They also showed significantly greater attention to the face, left eye, right eye and eye regions of interest and lesser visual attention to the screen than the children with ASD. These results indicate a greater attention by the typical children to the salient aspects of the human and animal images. Children with ASD, on the contrary, showed greater attention than typical peers to the screen or the part of the image that did not contain socially significant information across all human and animal images. The children with ASD, however, showed significantly greater attention to animal faces and eye region and lesser attention to the animal mouth when compared to human faces, indicating that the children with ASD had a clear attentional preference to socially salient regions of animal stimuli. The positive attentional bias toward animal images was also demonstrated in gaze orientation. The children with ASD demonstrated significantly greater visual attention to the face and eye region of front facing animal images when compared to animal images with averted eyes. They showed no such preference for a direct gaze orientation for human faces.

This research suggests that the atypicalities in social attention in ASD may not be uniform across species and that children with ASD may potentially experience greater social reward processing and lesser social anxiety in the presence of animals than in the presence of humans. This research adds to the strong evidence base for the use of animal assisted interventions for children with autism. Incorporation of animals in the intervention process may promote “enhanced visual attention and preference to the context and activities involved, and thereby potentially lead to an overall enhancement in social attention.”