In humans, effortful cognitive processing frequently takes place during social interaction, with eye contact being an important component. This study shows that the effect of eye contact on memory for nonsocial information is different in children with typical development than in children with autism, a disorder of social communication. Direct gaze facilitated memory performance in children with typical development (n = 25, 6 years old), but no such facilitation was seen in the clinical group (n = 10, 6 years old). Eye tracking conducted during the cognitive test revealed strikingly similar patterns of eye movements, indicating that the results cannot be explained by differences in overt attention. Collectively, these findings have theoretical significance and practical implications for testing practices in children.

Discussion concerns the differential predictive power of maternal responses to the Adult Attachment Interview as related to the domain of children's social and emotional understanding.

No abstract

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.