# Examining the Link Between Social Affect and Visual Exploration of Cute Stimuli in Autistic Children

## TL;DR

This study explores how autistic children's visual attention to cute stimuli, like babies and animals, relates to their social skills and autism symptom severity.

## Contribution

The study reveals that sensitivity to baby schema varies with autism severity and social affect, offering new insights into visual attention patterns in autistic children.

## Key findings

- Only children with low-moderate autism severity and typically developing children showed increased attention to cute stimuli.
- Higher social affect symptom severity was linked to reduced attention to cute-featured stimuli.
- Findings suggest a connection between autism severity and responsiveness to cute stimuli in social contexts.

## Abstract

Baby schema refers to physical features perceived as cute, known to trigger attention, induce positive emotions, and prompt social interactions. Given the reduced visual attention to social stimuli observed in individuals on the autism spectrum, the current study examines whether the sensitivity to baby schema is also affected. We expected that the looking time towards cute-featured stimuli would vary with symptom severity levels and would be associated with social affect. Ninety-four children (31 typically developing; 63 diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder - ASD) aged 20–83 months (M = 49.63, SD = 13.59) completed an eye-tracking visual exploration task. Autistic participants were separated into two groups based on symptom severity: children with high autism severity symptoms (HS ASD; N = 23) and low-moderate autism symptoms (LMS ASD; N = 40). Animals and neutral objects were simultaneously presented on the screen along with either human babies (condition 1) or adults (condition 2). The results indicated that visual attention oriented to cute-featured stimuli varied with autism symptom severity: only LMS and TD groups spend more time looking at cute-featured stimuli (babies; animals) than neutral objects. Moreover, children with higher severity in the social affect domain spent less time on the stimuli depicting cute than non-cute stimuli. These findings suggest that autism symptom severity and social skills are linked to variations in visual attention to cute stimuli. Implications of baby schema sensitivity are discussed in relation to the development of social competencies and play, responsiveness to robot-based interventions, as well as appraised relevance in autistic children.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10803-024-06504-1.