Recent studies on gaze behaviours in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have shifts differently depending on when these occur in a stream of other action. The study suggests that introducing this qualitative dimension to eye tracking research could increase its ecological validity and offer new insight into gaze behaviours in ASD.

This study examined social-pragmatic inferencing, visual social attention and physiological reactivity to complex social scenes. Participants were autistic young adults (n = 14) and a control group of young adults (n = 14) without intellectual disability. Results indicate between-group differences in social-pragmatic inferencing, moment-level social attention and heart rate variability (HRV) reactivity. A key finding suggests associations between increased moment-level social attention to facial emotion expressions, better social-pragmatic inferencing and greater HRV suppression in autistic young adults. Supporting previous research, better social-pragmatic inferencing was found associated with less autistic traits.

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