Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition. Individuals with autism are facing both overt discrimination and subtle implicit biases that restrict their access to employment, educational opportunities, and social inclusion. This study investigated people’s implicit attitudes and visual attentional biases toward autistic individuals by integrating the Implicit Association Test (IAT) with an eye-tracking dot-probe paradigm. Twenty-one participants’ viewing patterns were recorded by an eye-tracker while observing images of autistic individuals and neurotypical individuals. A dot-probe task was conducted afterwards. The participants also completed IAT tasks pairing the same images with positive or negative words. Eye-tracking parameters, including total fixation duration (TFD), first fixation duration (FFD), fixation count (FC), and time to first fixation (TFF), were analyzed. IAT performance was assessed using D-scores. IAT Results revealed significant negative implicit biases toward autistic individuals. Male participants exhibited stronger biases than females. There was no significant difference found between autistic and neurotypical faces for TFD, FC, or FFD. While, images of autistic individuals attracted significantly shorter TFF. Moreover, participants displayed shorter TFF for ipsilateral detection points in the dot-probe task. It suggests the presence of early attentional biases. By combining eye-tracking, dot-probe paradigms, and IAT measures, this study demonstrates a link between early attentional biases and negative implicit attitudes. The findings provide behavioral evidences for the attention-attitude dual-stage model. These results highlight the importance of interventions aimed at mitigating bias towards individuals with autism.

Jin Kefan. Attention–Attitude Coupling in Implicit Bias toward Individuals Autism: Evidence from Eye-tracking and Implicit Association Test. Academic Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences (2025), Vol. 8, Issue 10: 70-76. https://doi.org/10.25236/AJHSS.2025.081012.

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