ArticleAutism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research2018
Sex differences in social attention in autism spectrum disorder.
Article in Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 54 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
54 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Eye Tracking as a Treatment Monitoring Tool for Autism: A Multilevel Meta-Analysis.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2025Pooled it
- Is There a Bias Towards Males in the Diagnosis of Autism? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Neuropsychology review · 2025Pooled it
- Emotional stimulation processing characteristics in depression: Meta-analysis of eye tracking findings.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Pooled it
- A Randomized Trial Utilizing EEG Brain Computer Interface to Improve Facial Emotion Recognition in Autistic Adults.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2025Trial
- Modeling how autistic and non-autistic groups learn about their own and each other's preferences.Nature. Mental health · 2026Article
- Untangling Sex and Gender Differences in Impression Management and Associated Autism Features in French Autistic Adults.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2026Article
- Social Attention Through a New Lens: Autistic and ADHD Traits and Eye Occlusion Affect Gaze During Conversation Watching.Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) · 2026Article
- Adverse Childhood Experiences in Autistic and Neurotypical Girls.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2026Article
- Evaluation of the Social Attention Hypothesis: Do Children with Autism Prefer to See Objects Rather than People?Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2026Article
- The impact of autism on the relations between social anxiety, camouflaging, and depression in Taiwanese adolescents.Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health · 2026Article
- Sex differences in the relationship between autistic traits and face-change discrimination sensitivity in the general population: a psychophysical investigation.Cognitive processing · 2025Article
- "You should smile more": Population-level sex differences in smiling also exist in autistic people.Autism : the international journal of research and practice · 2025Article
- The intersection and developmental trajectory of morning cortisol and testosterone in autistic and neurotypical youth.Molecular autism · 2025Article
- Cognitive flexibility in autism: How task predictability and sex influence performances.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2025Article
- Early selective attention to the articulating mouth as a potential female-specific marker of better language development in autism: a review.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Borderline Personality as a Factor in Late, Missed, and Mis-Diagnosis in Autistic Girls and Women: A Conceptual Analysis.Autism in adulthood · 2024Article
- Gender, assigned sex at birth, and gender diversity: Windows into diagnostic timing disparities in autism.Autism : the international journal of research and practice · 2024Article
- HLA-A, -B, -C and -DRB1 Association with Autism Spectrum Disorder Risk: A Sex-Related Analysis in Italian ASD Children and Their Siblings.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Article
- Internal Consistency of the Serbian Translation of the Stanford Social Dimensions Scale and Association to Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire Scores in Male and Female Individuals on the Autism Spectrum and Non-autistic Individuals.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2024Article
- PV and SST neurons in the anterior cingulate cortex regulate social disorders in adulthood induced by sensory abnormalities in childhood.CNS neuroscience & therapeutics · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Although reduced social attention and increased nonsocial attention have been reported in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the studies have relied on predominantly male samples and have been underpowered to examine sex differences. These processes may differ for females with ASD, who have been shown to be dissimilar to males in social motivation and nonsocial features, including circumscribed interests (CI). The goal of this study was to compare social and nonsocial visual attention between males and females with ASD on a validated eye-tracking paradigm. Eighty-five school-aged (6-10 years) males and females with and without ASD completed a paired preference task of face and object stimuli (half of which related to common CI). After covarying for chronological and mental age, the presence of concurrently presented CI images reduced prioritization and attention to faces for males more than females, replicating previous findings. ASD females maintained comparable attention patterns to typically developing females, suggesting that previous findings of reduced social attention and increased attention to CI-related objects in autism may be specific to males. These findings are also inconsistent with the "extreme male brain" theory of autism. The more normative orienting and attention to social stimuli for females with ASD may indicate distinct phenotypic characteristics relative to males and possibly serve as a protective effect. Autism Res 2018, 11: 1264-1275. © 2018 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: As autism is more commonly diagnosed in males, less is known about females with autism. Two areas of interest include the interests held by individuals with autism and how socially motivated they are. We used eye tracking as a way to understand these two areas. Our data reveal that elementary school-aged females (6-10 years) with autism attended to faces comparatively to females without autism, suggesting that (1) they were more socially motivated than males with autism and (2) the images of common interests were less motivating to them.
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