A possible explanation for intact performance on certain gaze processing tasks is that those with ASC are utilising perceptual mechanisms that focus more on the featural processing, rather than holistic processing. This idea is consistent with a number of cognitive models proposing that deficits in ASC emerge from difficulties in more holistic types of processing, alongside a greater focus on individual features and small details. In the previously described gaze cuing tasks, intact performance could have emerged because people with ASC were only focusing on the eye regions within the displays to determine gaze direction, and not processing the whole stimuli, or integrating information from the facial context and display. Merely being able to follow someone else’s gaze does not necessarily mean taking into account their attention or sharing their experience. Attributing mental states to others is important for gaze-cued attention shifts in adults, consistent with evidence from infant studies showing they follow gaze to understand what someone else is attending to (that is, to understand their attentional mental state). Therefore, although people with ASC might follow the gaze direction of others, they may do so in a different manner and utilising different cognitive and neural mechanisms compared to controls. Neuroimaging studies investigating gaze direction processing in ASC have reported that STS activity does not show the same modulation across conditions as seen in controls, suggesting STS activity is not modulated in response to different social meanings attributed to gaze directions in ASC. Since the STS contains neural populations specialised for processing different social cues relevant to understanding the gaze direction of others, a lack of modulated STS activity may reflect atypical recruitment of these specialised regions when determining the gaze direction of others in ASC.