Do the eyes have it? Extraction of identity and positive expression from another’s eyes in autism, probed using “Bubbles”

Background: It has been debated whether attending to a particular facial region, such as the eyes, is impaired in children with autism. The purpose of this study was to verify the poor eye gaze hypothesis postulating that children with High-Functioning Autism (HFA)/AS are impaired in their ability to attend to another’s eyes. Methods: Our study used the “Bubbles” method. A group with ASD (n = 15) and a paired non-ASD group (n = 18) completed an identity judgment task requiring a binary judgment of the identity of a person in an image, and an emotion judgment task requiring perception of expressed happiness in a facial image. Results: Results indicated that similar to non-ASD individuals, ASD individuals used information from other people’s eyes to judge identity as well as emotion, and performed as successfully as the non-ASD group both in identity and emotion judgment tasks. The results challenge the conventional hypothesis that individuals with ASD cannot attend to or derive information from another’s eyes. Conclusion: Our findings combined with the results of poor eye gaze to expressions of fear in previous studies suggest that ASD individuals can derive information pertaining to positive emotion, but cannot sufficiently extract information pertaining to negative emotion from another’s eyes.