While people with autism may avoid eye contact in one-on-one conversations, they may not avoid looking at people in photos, according to Penn State researchers.

Krista Wilkinson, professor of communication sciences and disorders, said previously it was thought that people with autism had a hard time focusing on humans in photos, which could make it difficult for them to use certain communication aids. Communication boards, for example, use photos of people doing various activities to help users communicate when they choose a photo.

Wilkinson said the study’s findings — recently published in the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research — suggest these communication aids could still be useful to help people with autism communicate.

“There’s still a myth out there that people with autism look at still images differently,” Wilkinson said. “But we’re starting to see it’s the social demands — not the visual demands — of face-to-face contact that is provoking gaze avoidance, and that people with autism do look at people within photos.”

The study included 30 participants: 10 people with autism spectrum disorder, 10 with Down syndrome and 10 with typical development. Jiali Liang, doctoral student in communication sciences and disorders, explained that it was important to compare participants with autism to both typically developed peers as well as those with another disability.

“We included participants with Down syndrome because previous studies suggested that perhaps the eye gaze behaviors of kids with autism may not be specific just to autism, but also to those with other conditions,” Liang said. “We needed to include participants with another disability to see if these eye gaze patterns are specific to autism or if they show up in people with a wide range of disabilities.”

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