Effects of social complexity and gender on social and non‐social attention in male and female autistic children: A comparison of four eye‐tracking paradigms

This publication is included in the Autistic Autism Scholarship Project. one author of this publication is identified as autistic in the project.

About the autistic author marker

Putnam, O., Sasson, N., Parish‐Morris, J., & Harrop, C. (2022). Effects of social complexity and gender on social and non‐social attention in male and female autistic children: A comparison of four eye‐tracking paradigms. Autism Research, 16(2), 315-326. https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.2851

Publication date: 21 Nov 2022 Added to AutiHub: 27 Sep 2026 Type: Article Article language: English

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Authors

Publication authors
4
Publication authors identified as autistic
1 / 4 (25.0%)

Abstract

Abstract Eye tracking has long been used to characterize differences in social attention between autistic and non‐autistic children, but recent work has shown that these patterns may vary widely according to the biological sex of the participants and the social complexity and gender‐typicality of the eye tracking stimuli (e.g., barbies vs. transformers). To better understand effects of sex, social complexity, and object gender‐typicality on social and non‐social gaze behavior in autism, we compared the visual attention patterns of 67 autistic (ASD) and non‐autistic (NA) males (M) and females (F) (ASD M = 21; ASD F = 18; NA M = 14; NA F = 14) across four eye tracking paradigms varying in social complexity and object gender‐typicality. We found consistency across paradigms in terms of overall attention and attention to social stimuli, but attention to objects varied when paradigms considered gender in their stimulus design. Children attended more to gendered objects, particularly when the gender‐typicality of the object matched their assigned sex. These results demonstrate that visual social attention in autism is affected by interactions between a child's biological sex, social scene complexity, and object gender‐typicality and have broad implications for the design and interpretation of eye tracking studies.

Bibliography cited by this reference

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Cited bibliography overview

These indicators describe the bibliography cited by this publication. An author name is counted each time it appears in one cited reference, so the same person can be counted more than once. Names not yet linked to an author already present in AutiHub are treated as unknown, not as non-autistic. Last computed: 2 Oct 2026 01:01.

Cited references
63
With a DOI
54
Without a DOI, from raw bibliography text
9
1 / 63 (1.6%) cited references include at least one author identified as autistic.
References with data to complete
5 / 63 (7.9%)
References with detected author names
58 / 63 (92.1%)
Without detected author names
5
Without a structured title
5
Without a stable identifier
9
References with raw author names still to review
0
References with external metadata lookup issues
1
These indicators apply to cited references displayed on this page, after technical duplicates have been merged. A reference without a DOI can still support author statistics when a title and author names are available.
Author names detected in the cited bibliography
349
From DOI or external metadata
349
From validated raw bibliography text
0
Raw names already validated
0
Raw names still to review
0
119 / 349 (34.1%) names are linked to an author already present in AutiHub. 230 / 349 (65.9%) names are not yet linked.
Names linked to a person identified as autistic
3 / 349 (0.9%)
Calculated across all author names detected in the cited bibliography. Among names linked to an author already present in AutiHub: 3 / 119 (2.5%). Distinct people identified as autistic: 3 / 245 (1.2%).
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