Encouraging Eye Contact May Disturb Autistic Kids’ Thinking

Children with autism look away from faces when thinking, especially about a challenging problem — just as people without the condition do, according to a recent study. Avoiding eye contact is a common behavior of people with autism, and children with the condition are sometimes trained and encouraged to meet other’s gazes. But the new findings show that looking away sometimes serves a purpose, and encouraging eye contact can interfere with a child’s thoughts. “Although social skills training is important in encouraging eye contact with children with autism,” the new study shows that gaze aversion is helpful in concentrating on difficult tasks, said study researcher Gwyneth Doherty-Sneddon, an associate dean at Northumbria University in England. “When teachers or parents ask a child a difficult question, and they look away, our advice would be to wait to allow them to process the information, and focus on finding a suitable response,” Doherty-Sneddon said. http://pdresources.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/encouraging-eye-contact-may-disturb-autistic-kids-thinking/