New research has uncovered the ways that children with autism and dogs interact, through the use of eye-tracking.

The well-known saying, “Eyes are the windows to the soul”, reveals the importance placed on eye contact for judging a person’s character and intentions. When listening to someone speak, we spend up to 70% of the time looking into their eyes, which tells the other person that we’re paying attention; but it’s a complex social signal because too much or too little eye contact can feel unnerving.

This is problematic for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who often experience discomfort when making eye contact with others. Children with ASD find it harder to make friends and engage in social activities. However, interestingly, many children find it easier and more natural to interact with animals, especially dogs.

Autistic children may find it easier to interact with dogs because they provide non-verbal and straightforward companionship, without the fear of judgement. Dogs are predictable in their behaviours and offer children a safe space to practice their communication skills. For this reason, researchers recently conducted a study using eye-tracking methodology to see where autistic children looked whilst interacting with an assistance dog.

Autism and eye gaze with dogs

The study included 20 children, aged between 6 and 16-years-old, most of whom had pets at home. Seven of the children had a diagnosis of ASD, whilst the remaining children had typical development. All children were fitted with lightweight eye-tracking glasses which monitored where they were looking in real time.

The children were then guided through several tasks with the assistance dog they were paired with, before being allowed to interact freely with them. In the final phase, children performed a computer-based facial expression identification task, where they viewed photographs of people and dog faces and assigned an emotion to them.

Unexpected study findings

The results revealed that children with ASD behaved very similarly to their neurotypical peers when interacting with the dog freely, touching and playing with them. But their eye gaze patterns differed during the structured component, when instructed to look at the dog’s or person’s face. In this part, children with ASD spent more time looking at the background than their neurotypical peers.

However, when children with ASD did look at the dogs face (especially their eyes), it was associated with more socially engaged behaviour and the children scored higher on the facial expression identification task, for both people and dogs. For all children, anger was the easiest emotion to recognise in dogs, whilst fear was the most challenging.

Similarities and differences

Despite the well-documented social challenges facing children with ASD, the findings of the study revealed many similarities when interacting freely with an assistance dog. The facial expression identification abilities also did not differ significantly between the two groups of children, highlighting the potential power of animal-assisted interventions.

Although, it is important to recognise that the study’s small sample size makes it difficult to generalise the findings to a larger population. In particular, there was a gender imbalance between the two groups, with all children with ASD being boys, and most children in the neurotypical group being girls. Therefore, more research is needed to determine whether the presence of a dog can facilitate emotional functioning in children with ASD.

Key study findings:

• Children with ASD looked less at dog and human faces when instructed to
• When allowed to play freely, all children displayed similar behaviours
• No differences were observed in the facial expression identification task
• Children with ASD who looked more at the dog’s eyes were better able to identify facial expressions and had more frequent interaction with the dog