New promising assessment possibilities have been studied in Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD) such as eye tracking analysis. This study compares the perception of human faces in children with PDD and children with typical development through the analysis of eye-tracking patterns. Ten participants with PDD, mean age of 11.9 years (SD=3.22), were matched by age and gender with 10 participants with typical development. Ten neutral faces, in black-and-white, were observed per 10 seconds each while some stimuli were controlled: gender (male or female); position (normal or upside-down); presence of eyes (present or absent). Significant differences were found: PDD participants spent less time looking at eyes of male faces; spent less time with faces and eyes in upside-down figures and spent less time looking at faces with eyes and faces with occulted eyes; and control group spent more time looking at the eyes region when these were occulted.
autism; face perception; social behavior
