At 11 years old, I stood next to my resource instructor as we worked through the tasks on my behavior plan. My task: three seconds of eye contact. "This isn't like real life," I thought. I appreciated that to a degree. Making eye contact was not instinctual to me in conversation. I took the opportunity to study her eyes. Her eyes remained blue, just like yesterday. We looked away until I was prompted to try again. I wanted to make friends, and this was supposed to help me do that. Yet, I wasn't sure how that goal would be accomplished here. I'm still not.
While not all autistic people prefer not to make eye contact, a lack of eye contact has long been associated with autism. The eye avoidance hypothesis asserts that avoidance of eye contact in autism could be a regulatory strategy due to over-activation of the autistic brain's threat system when eye contact is made. In a review of 11 fMRI studies, eight revealed a hyper-activation of the amygdala, a brain region key in threat-based emotions like fear when presented with pictures of eyes (Stuart et al., 2023).
This overactivity reflects the lived experience of autistic individuals who have reported overwhelm with eye contact. One study of autistic adults and adolescents found that many experience sensory overwhelm, distress, and distraction when trying to make eye contact (Trevisan et........