Teenagers with autism use as many gestures in conversation as do their typically developing peers. Their gestures do not improve their stories, however, and are poorly linked to the words they wish to illustrate.

Relatives of individuals with autism recognize faces and emotions better than people with autism do, but not as well as typically developing controls do, according to a study published in December in Autism Research.

Teenagers with autism look at faces in pictures a little later than controls do, even when the faces are the most striking part of the image, according to a study published in November in Neuropsychologia. They are as likely as healthy controls to look at other prominent aspects of an image, however.

Children with autism are less interested in watching an activity, such as a parent and child putting together a puzzle, compared with typically developing controls, according to a study published in November in Brain Research.

Children with autism play eagerly with robots — and their social interactions with people improve as a result.

An asocial inbred mouse strain called BTBR may show behaviors associated with autism, such as avoiding eye gaze and forming an attachment to objects, researchers reported Monday at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego.

A new brain imaging technique may provide a powerful tool for understanding social interaction, and how it is disrupted in conditions such as autism, according to a poster presented Sunday at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego.

Oxytocin may activate the mirror neuron system — a group of neurons that is active when people empathize with others — according to a paper published in the November Psychoneuroendocrinology.

Individuals with autism spend less time looking at eyes than at the mouth because they actively shift their gaze away from the eye region, according to a study published in September in the Journal of Neuroscience.

At 6 months of age, siblings of children with autism are less likely to gaze spontaneously at their caregivers while focused on learning a new task, though they learn the task just as quickly as do low-risk infants, according to a study in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.