Deviant gaze processing in children with autism: an ERP study

This study investigated event-related potentials (ERP) during an oddball task in which detection of specific eye direction was required of children with and without autism. The detection of a change in eye direction elicited occipito-temporal negativity, which had two major differences between children with and without autism. First, while this occipito-temporal negativity predominated in the right hemisphere of typically developed children, it was distributed equally bilaterally in children with autism. Second, the amplitude of this negativity was more pronounced in typically developed children in response to the detection of direct gaze as compared to averted gaze, but was not sensitive to direct/averted gaze direction in children with autism, which converges with behavioral reports. The results concur with previous literature, suggesting the importance of the right hemisphere, especially the superior temporal sulcus, in gaze processing. Results indicate that deviant neural substrates might be involved in gaze processing in individuals with autism.