A number of recent studies have revealed that individuals with ASD show normal patterns of reflexive gaze cueing when
evaluated using Posner-style laboratory tasks. In this experimental task, participants are shown a centrally located face that gazes either left or right; after a time lag a target stimulus appears on either side of the face and participants are tasked with pressing a key once they have visually located the target stimulus. Participants usually respond faster to valid trials where the central stimulus cues the target location compared to invalid cues. Similarities in the patterns of reaction times to gaze cues between individuals with ASD and matched controls, however, may hide qualitative differences in underlying cognitive mechanisms. For example,Senju et al. found that children with ASD showed the validity effect to both social and nonsocial cues even when the cues were counter-informative (i.e., 80 %of the trials were invalid), whereas in typically developing children only reflexive orienting to faces survived this manipulation, indicating a preferential sensitivity to eye gaze in typically developing children, but not in children with ASD. This research suggests that children with ASD rely on the same processing strategies for social and nonsocial cues, whereas typically developing children utilize different underlying processes for social and nonsocial cues. To date, no prospective longitudinal study has been conducted to evaluate whether early qualitative differences in reflexive orienting underlie later delays in spontaneous gaze following