Several decades of research have demonstrated that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show characteristic delays in the ability to spontaneously follow the direction of another person’s gaze in social situations. In spite of these
characteristic delays, children’s performance on gaze following tasks has been linked to both children’s chronological and mental age. Generally, children with ASD withmental ages above 4 years successfully follow another person’s eye gaze and head turn under experimental conditions. However, subtle differences in spontaneous gaze following may persist throughout development, particularly during real life situations when the environment is more complex than during a controlled laboratory task. Subtle differences in gaze followingmay also constitute a sub-clinical feature associated with the broad autism phenotype.