Do Children with Autism have Expectancies about the Social Behaviour of Unfamiliar People?

Eight low-functioning and non-verbal children with autism were presented with a modified version of the ‘still face’ paradigm (still face/imitative interaction/still face) performed by a stranger. The children’s reactions illustrate the development of expectancies concerning human social behaviour. While they ignored the stranger and did not show any concern about her odd behaviour during the first still episode, they all focused on the adult during the second still episode. In this episode, they exhibited a mixed social pattern of positive overtures and negative emotional expressions which resembles the still face effect found in normally developing infants. These findings suggest that low-functioning children with autism are able to integrate their previous experience with a partner and detect social contingency, but that they are not able to form a generalized expectancy for social contingency in human beings with whom they have not yet had contact. This may explain why they generally ignore strangers.