ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes a new way of capturing the role of gaze as part of lived social experiences: an interactional framework which can simultaneously unpack questions about normative gaze behaviour, which is essential for when people want to understand gaze in autism. Investigating autistic children's use of gaze in real social settings, namely at homes and in schools, it introduces a multimodal interaction perspective to the study of autism. The chapter examines empirically how parents and teachers make judgements of and respond to autistic children's gaze in real time, and how autistic children themselves make such judgements and use gaze in social interactions. It identifies the role of gaze in social interactions, suggests the psychological notions of gaze that emphasise autism-related impairments, and interrogates typical norms around gaze and communication, and the conditions under which these might become disabling to autistic persons. Research on social attention has become a central concern in the field of autism.
