A recent article published in June 2013, titled “Why Kids with Autism May Avoid Eye Contact,” discusses a study suggesting brains of autistic children process visual information differently. These findings stray away from the idea of autism just being a social deficit. When an image is located in the periphery of a child with autism, a large area of their brain’s cortex shows activity. In contrast, normal children display activity in a large amount of the cortex when an image is located in the center of their visual field. Study researcher, John Foxe, explains that children with autism avoid eye contact due to their lack of ability to control their eye movements. The autistic children in the study have a different visual cortex mapping in that “more neurons are devoted to process information in the periphery.” It is important to note that lack of eye movement control does not cause autism.
In her book, Pink Brain, Blue Brain, Lisa Eliot distinguishes differences between the brains of boys and girls at different stages of life by referring to extensive research, including her own work in the field, and citing her experience raising her two sons and one daughter. Eliot also debunks myths and identifies gender biases in published works of other researchers. One of the topics discussed in her book is autism. Those with autism suffer from the deficit of “a lack of social awareness or understanding of other people’s feelings and motives” (79) and are typically diagnosed by age four. Of those children diagnosed, 80% are boys. The author continues to describe difficulties that autistic children face, “[they] have difficulty communicating, making eye contact, and, especially, understanding that other people have thoughts and emotions different from their own.”
Earlier in the book, Eliot identifies social and emotional differences between baby boys and baby girls. Many studies have been done on early eye contact. A 1979 experiment showed girls held eye contact longer than boys, while a 2004 experiment found no sex differences in newborns. Another study from the University of Cambridge had results of boys spending about 52% of their time looking at the mobile and 46% of their time looking at a face, while girls spent 49% of their time looking at a face and 41% of the time looking at the mobile. The idea of girls being pre-wired for social interactions and boys being pre-wired for objects and mechanical interests should be reevaluated. This study may have experienced gender bias due to the experimenters knowing the gender of the baby in each trial. A study from 1996 contradicts this idea because it found that both boys and girls gazed longer at a colorful toy than at their own mothers’ faces in person. Plus, in 2004, a study found no sex differences in newborns’ eye contact and then found that boys increase their eye contact slightly four months later and girls increase their eye contact four-fold four months later. Furthermore, 2002 study found that baby boys begin to avert their gaze in their third month of life. Girls do as well, but males of all ages resort to gaze aversion more frequently than females (72).
It is obvious that more males than females are diagnosed with autism (although, it is possible that females are underdiagnosed). However, further studies are needed to be done before any conclusions on averted gaze can be linked to autism, as it is seen generally in people of both genders (and even more so in males).
Eliot, Lise. Pink Brain, Blue Brain: how small differences grow into troublesome gaps and what
we can do about it. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. 2009. Print.
Rowan, Karen. "Why Kids With Autism May Avoid Eye Contact." LiveScience. TechMedia
Network, 05 June 2013. Web. 27 Feb. 2014.
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