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This study examined involuntary capture of attention, overt attention, and stimulus valence and arousal ratings, all factors that can contribute to potential attentional biases to face and train objects in children with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In the visual domain, faces are particularly captivating, and are thought to have a ‘special status’ in the attentional system. Research suggests that similar attentional biases may exist for other objects of expertise (e.g. birds for bird experts), providing support for the role of exposure in attention prioritization. Autistic individuals often have circumscribed interests around certain classes of objects, such as trains, that are related to vehicles and mechanical systems. This research aimed to determine whether this propensity in autistic individuals leads to stronger attention capture by trains, and perhaps weaker attention capture by faces, than what would be expected in non-autistic children. In Experiment 1, autistic children (6–14 years old) and age- and IQ-matched non-autistic children performed a visual search task where they manually indicated whether a target butterfly appeared amongst an array of face, train, and neutral distractors while their eye-movements were tracked. Autistic children were no less susceptible to attention capture by faces than non-autistic children. Overall, for both groups, trains captured attention more strongly than face stimuli and, trains had a larger effect on overt attention to the target stimuli, relative to face distractors. In Experiment 2, a new group of children (autistic and non-autistic) rated train stimuli as more interesting and exciting than the face stimuli, with no differences between groups. These results suggest that: (1) other objects (trains) can capture attention in a similar manner as faces, in both autistic and non-autistic children (2) attention capture is driven partly by voluntary attentional processes related to personal interest or affective responses to the stimuli.

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Alexithymia is characterized by difficulties identifying and describing one's own emotions and the emotions of others. These challenges with understanding emotions in people with alexithymia may give rise to difficulties with social interactions. Given that alexithymia frequently co‐occurs with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and that both populations have difficulties with social interactions, it is of interest to determine whether alexithymia can help to parse some of the heterogeneity in social competence in autistic and nonautistic individuals. The caregivers of 241 children (6–14 years old), including 120 autistic, and 121 nonautistic, rated their child's social competence using the Multidimensional Social Competence Scale (MSCS), autism traits using the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ), and alexithymia traits using the Children's Alexithymia Measure (CAM). Regression analyses indicated that age, IQ, sex, AQ, and CAM scores accounted for 40.2% of the variance in autistic children's, and 68.2% of the variance in nonautistic children's, parent‐reported social competence. Importantly, after controlling for age, IQ, sex, and AQ scores, CAM scores alone accounted for an additional 16.2% of the variance in autistic children's, and 17.4% of the variance in nonautistic children's social competence. These results indicate that higher alexithymia traits predict lower levels of social competence, suggesting that increased difficulty in identifying and describing one's own emotions and the emotions of others is associated with poorer social competence. Furthermore, CAM scores were found to partially mediate the relationship between autistic traits and social competence, suggesting that comorbid alexithymia traits may be partially responsible for poor social competence in individuals with high autistic traits. This research contributes to the understanding of the factors associated with the development of social competence and highlights alexithymia as a potential target for identification and intervention to improve social competence. Lay Summary Alexithymia is a condition where people find it hard to think and talk about their (and others') feelings. About 50% of autistic people have alexithymia. This might be why they have social and emotional difficulties. Parents answered questions about alexithymia and social difficulties their children have. Children with more alexithymia problems had poorer social skills. Thus, alexithymia may be related to social problems faced by autistic and nonautistic children.

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