ArticleFrontiers in psychology2020
Do Animals Engage Greater Social Attention in Autism? An Eye Tracking Analysis.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Stage-Specific Animate Attention Bias in Individuals with High and Low Autistic Traits: Behavioral and Eye-Tracking Evidence.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Stepped-Care Digital Gaming Intervention Enhanced Emotion Recognition in Autistic Children: A Randomized Controlled Trial.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2026Article
- Influence of phylogenetic proximity on children's empathy towards other species.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Preliminary findings on the different gaze patterns on animal-based and human-based picture books in autistic children.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- From Gaze to Interaction: Links Between Visual Attention, Facial Expression Identification, and Behavior of Children Diagnosed with ASD or Typically Developing Children with an Assistance Dog.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Does a Dog at School Help Identify Human and Animal Facial Expressions? A Preliminary Longitudinal Study.European journal of investigation in health, psychology and education · 2025Article
- How Do Children and Adolescents with ASD Look at Animals? A Scoping Review.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- 'They ask no questions and pass no criticism': A mixed-methods study exploring pet ownership in autism.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2023Article
- The non-human animal reading the mind in the eyes test (NARMET): A new measure for the assessment of social cognition.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Article
- Self-perceived empathic abilities of people with autism towards living beings mostly differs for humans.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Emotion Facial Processing in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Pilot Study of the Impact of Service Dogs.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Visual Exploration and Observation of Real-Life Interactions Between Children with ASD and Service Dogs.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2021Article
- Dogs Supporting Human Health and Well-Being: A Biopsychosocial Approach.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundVisual atypicalities in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are a well documented phenomenon, beginning as early as 2-6 months of age and manifesting in a significantly decreased attention to the eyes, direct gaze and socially salient information. Early emerging neurobiological deficits in perceiving social stimuli as rewarding or its active avoidance due to the anxiety it entails have been widely purported as potential reasons for this atypicality. Parallel research evidence also points to the significant benefits of animal presence for reducing social anxiety and enhancing social interaction in children with autism. While atypicality in social attention in ASD has been widely substantiated, whether this atypicality persists equally across species types or is confined to humans has not been a key focus of research insofar.
methodsWe attempted a comprehensive examination of the differences in visual attention to static images of human and animal faces (40 images; 20 human faces and 20 animal faces) among children with ASD using an eye tracking paradigm. 44 children (ASD
resultsResults obtained revealed significantly greater social attention across human and animal stimuli in typical controls when compared to children with ASD. However in children with ASD, a significantly greater attention allocation was seen to animal faces and eye region and lesser attention to the animal mouth when compared to human faces, indicative of a clear attentional preference to socially salient regions of animal stimuli. The positive attentional bias toward animals was also seen in terms of a significantly greater visual attention to direct gaze in animal images.
conclusionOur results suggest the possibility that atypicalities in social attention in ASD may not be uniform across species. It adds to the current neural and biomarker evidence base of the potentially greater social reward processing and lesser social anxiety underlying animal stimuli as compared to human stimuli in children with ASD.
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