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Post published on Bluesky on 23 Oct 2025 11:19

Bluesky DOI work crossref Extract quoted in the post Question asked by Dawson in the post External link integrated into the post Autism terms

Autistic children deprioritize faces in arrays of images? psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-... autistics "tend to visually explore images containing social and nonsocial information in a more heterogeneous way than NT individuals, whose visual attention is rapidly and homogenously captured by faces"

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DOI work Fetched Post crossref

Jason W. Griffin, Hope C. Willis, Kelsey Dommer, Adam Naples, Geraldine Dawson, Shafali Jeste, Susan Faja, Raphael Bernier, et al. (2026). Reduced social prioritization: An underlying mechanism driving slower latency to look at faces in autism.. Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science, 135(2), 330-339. American Psychological Association (APA).

Publication date
February 2026
Identifier
10.1037/abn0001026
Authors
Jason W. Griffin, Hope C. Willis, Kelsey Dommer, Adam Naples, Geraldine Dawson, Shafali Jeste, Susan Faja, Raphael Bernier, Natalia Kleinhans, April Levin, Gerhard Hellemann, Damla Senturk, James Dziura, Catherine Sugar, Sara Jane Webb, James C. McPartland, Frederick Shic
Source
Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science
Details
135(2), 330-339
Reference type
article
Publisher
American Psychological Association (APA)
Metadata source
crossref

Abstract

= 118) children. Participants completed an eye tracking (ET) assay in which they viewed arrays of social and nonsocial stimuli. To determine why autistic children were slower to look at faces, we computed two ET metrics that reflected either deprioritization of social information or prolonged prioritization of nonsocial information. Deprioritization of social information was operationalized by face look number (FLN), which was defined as the numerical look sequence position of the first face look. Prolonged prioritization of nonsocial information was operationalized by time per object prior, which was defined as the average looking time per nonsocial object prior to the first face look. We found that autistic children were slower to look at faces compared to NT children and had higher FLN but not time per object prior compared to NT children. FLN was associated with measures of the autism phenotype. In summary, this work suggests deprioritization of social information better explains slower latency to look at faces in autistic children than prolonged prioritization of nonsocial information, with the reduced prioritization of faces contributing to difficulties in dynamic social interaction commonly observed in autism. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

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