Autistische Kinder verbringen weniger Zeit damit, sich süße Bilder anzuschauen

**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.

[Source](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-024-06504-1)

guess I’m autistic as I never looked at cute pictures on purpose, and skip them when they show up accidentally

I wonder if they checked boys and girls. My daughter is on the spectrum and LOVES cute things

Define “cute.” Some people find babies cute. Others dogs. Others cats. Some only puppies or kittens.

As someone who loves cats but cannot stand the sight of babies or most dogs, this is broad and ambiguous.

Study example image is all photos of people and animals staring directly into the camera. Huh. I wonder if there’s a prominent autistic trait about eye contact that might conflate the results a little.

Also, baby schema means bigger eyes and more intense gaze. How about that.