Does gaze direction modulate facial expression processing in children with autism spectrum disorder?

Two experiments investigated whether children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) integrate relevant communicative signals, such as gaze direction, when decoding a facial expression. In Experiment 1, typically developing children (9-14 years old; n = 14) were faster at detecting a facial expression accompanying a gaze direction with a congruent motivational tendency (i.e., an avoidant facial expression with averted eye gaze) than those with an incongruent motivational tendency. Children with ASD (9-14 years old; n = 14) were not affected by the gaze direction of facial stimuli. This finding was replicated in Experiment 2, which presented only the eye region of the face to typically developing children (n = 10) and children with ASD (n = 10). These results demonstrated that children with ASD do not encode and/or integrate multiple communicative signals based on their affective or motivational tendency.