Ming at Agents of Speech explains that while reduced eye contact can be a red flag, it doesn't mean someone has autism. Eye contact signals attention and joint attention. A child who doesn't seek attention may not make eye contact for reasons unrelated to autism.
No eye contact means it's autism. I get this a lot. If you just scroll down in YouTube comment section or on Facebook groups. Parents are always saying my kid never looks at me. They never. There's no joint attention gaze. Parents are always scared about this. Let me tell you now the answer is no. It doesn't mean it's autism. The gist of it is eye contact. It is a red flag for autism but doesn't mean that it correlates with autism. Doesn't mean it's a cause effect. Having a cough doesn't mean you have Covid right. It could be anything. You must understand that eye contact comes with what we call like pragmatics, language use, so to speak. So what is that? Primarily we have a few functions for eye contact or eye gaze or joint attention. Where the eye goes where they look. They only look at our eyes because it's a non verbal communication that children or human beings understand that I'm trying to get your attention. So if your child doesn't want your attention, why would they look at you? That's the first thing.
