As part of a thread on signs of ASD, people noted that one of the Big Questions is always about 'eye contact'.
What does it mean?
Most people have automatic signalling between them and other people using their eyes. They don't have to think about it. It helps the person they are with to know if it's their turn to speak, if the person is angry or happy, if the person is the leader or a follower in the group, if the person is telling the truth or not. All done automatically. The bits in the middle of the eyes also change size if they love someone, or hate them, or fear them, and the other person will 'read' those signals and react automatically to them.
To start a conversation with someone, you normally need to first establish eye contact. If that person looks back, "permission" has been granted by them to begin speaking.
As soon as the conversation begins, you will find that if you're speaking, you look away from the listener glancing back only occasionally to 'read' their body language, facial expressions etc and adapt your own conversation to match these tiny signals.
When you are done speaking, you automatically 'give permission' to speak to the other person by giving them some good eye contact. If you don't want to be interrupted by someone, you avoid looking at them.
Without eye contact, your listener will find it more difficult to interrupt you.
As a listener, you'll find you automatically look more at the speaker to show you are interested. Listeners typically look at the speaker about three quarters of the time in glances lasting 1-7 seconds each, no longer than that otherwise it's 'staring' at them, which is a threat signal. You find it hard to interrupt until the speakers looks at you again.
In group conversations, you have to signal with eye contact to all others that you want to speak, and if that doesn't work, you move around a bit or raise your voice a bit to get attention, again automatically.
That's the absolute basics of it.
It's like a whole amazing 'piece of music' going on between the two people who are talking to each other, taking turns to swap information about each other using their eyes.
Us with an ASD can't do this stuff. We can learn to do bits of it by being told to do it, but it's learned, not automatic, and people who naturally 'speak' eye contact and body language will always find our eye contact to be bloomin' weird compared to that of natural body-language-speakers. none of us can control the size of the pupils in our eyes to show emotions in the way that you do, so even if we practise the rest of it and get fairly good at it, it'll seem weird to others from time to time because our eyes will be displaying what looks like fear instead of love, etc.
Just teaching a child to look at someone is only a hundredth of the skill, and if they stare too long, they may actually be giving that person a threat signal or a signal to shut up. Not good things for friendships and turn-taking.
It's why 'does your child make eye contact' is a completely meaningless question. What you need to work out is how they're using eye contact, is it working, can they use it to stop and start conversations and tell people how they're feeling?
If not, can they learn the basics of staying safe with eye contact - learning not to stare etc? That's a good start, and better than being taught to stare at people, to be honest.
When people with an ASD look into the eyes of someone, all the info goes straight to the bit of our brain called the amygdala, which is a bit at the back that is very automatic and does its own thing. Normally it has a quick look at the person, gets the brain's filing clerk to get the info on that person, works out if they're a threat or not, then uses the eyes to signal "hey, I like you" or "sod off!". Not with us it doesn't. Ours sees the person, and because there's no filing clerk for the info about people, we have No Clue At All whether the person is a threat or not, so our eyes display 'fear', just in case they're dangerous.
It's why making eye contact with us is a very odd experience. People can't work out why we seem scared of them. That's why.
I worry about teaching eye contact to us. There's some research to suggest that if we make a lot of unnatural eye contact, all we end up doing is burning out the wiring to that bit of the brain and making it even more dificult for us to recognise people and do social stuff. Early days for that research, but it's something to bear in mind.
I know that years of doing all the eye-contact stuff for me has resulted in me getting worse at recognising people, not better. Interesting.