Autistic Individuals Do Not Alter Visual Processing Strategy During Encoding Versus Recognition of Faces: A Hidden Markov Modeling Approach

Visual face recognition—the ability to encode, discriminate, and recognize the faces of others—is fundamentally supported by eye movements and is a common source of difficulty for autistic individuals. We aimed to evaluate how visual processing strategies (i.e., eye movement patterns) directly support encoding and recognition of faces in autistic and neurotypical (NT) individuals. We used a hidden Markov modeling approach to evaluate the spatiotemporal dynamics of eye movements in autistic (n = 15) and neurotypical (NT) adolescents (n = 17) during a face identity recognition task. We discovered distinct eye movement patterns among all participants, which included a focused and exploratory strategy. When evaluating change in visual processing strategy across encoding and recognition phases, autistic individuals did not shift their eye movement patterns like their NT peers, who shifted to a more exploratory visual processing strategy during recognition. These findings suggest that autistic individuals do not modulate their visual processing strategy across encoding and recognition of faces, which may be an indicator of less efficient face processing.