SATO Wataru Laboratory
Eye gaze triggers visuospatial attentional shift in individuals with autism
(Okada, T., Sato, W., Murai, T., Kubota, Y., & Toichi, M.: Psychologia)
We examined whether eye gaze triggers reflexive attentional shift in autism.
First, autistic individuals who were lacking both joint attention behaviors and theory-of-mind abilities were examined. Targets were randomly presented to either the left or right side of a gazing face.
![](FigOkada2003Psychologia1.jpg)
Autistic subjects localized the targets faster when targets were congruent with than against gaze directions.
![](FigOkada2003Psychologia2.jpg)
The occurrence of this gaze-triggered attentional shift was further examined using different stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) in autistic individuals and non-autistic controls.
Autistic subjects similar to non-autistic controls responded faster when the targets were congruent with than against gaze directions for short SOA conditions.
![](FigOkada2003Psychologia3.jpg)
These results suggest that autistic individuals, even those lacking joint attention behaviors, respond reflexively to another person's gaze directions.
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