Communication deficits and avoidance of angry faces in children with autism spectrum disorder.

Background: Understanding how emotional faces are processed is important to help characterize the social deficits in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).

Aims: We examined: (i) whether attention is modulated by emotional facial expression; (ii) the time course of the attentional preferences (short vs. long stimulus presentation rates); and (iii) the association between attentional biases and autistic symptomatology.