Method Participants in this study were collected as part of ongoing studies focusing on young children at risk of having an autism spectrum disorder. The studies were conducted at the University of Michigan Autism and Communication Disorders Center (UMACC). Some children who were already being examined at the clinic were used in the study. Additionally, flyers were posted at local daycares requesting additional children for the typically developing group. Each child, ASD and TD, was asked to complete a familiar object grasping task so that the researchers could gather appropriate children for testing. During this small input task, the child was presented with a known object and two distractions. The child was then asked to demonstrate a simple action introduced by the researcher, such as “Can you put the dog in the bucket?” » The conclusion of this simple task was that if the child was unable to perform this task with a known object, the results of the rest of the tests with unknown objects would be meaningless and invalid. Children who failed to complete the entry task were excluded from the study. These children who did not pass the entrance test were developmentally younger and had lower IQs than those who passed. The final participant count was 21 children with ASD and 21 TD children (Luyster, R et al., 2009). Children underwent a series of three experimental assessments to assess their ability to identify and remember the names of novel objects. The investigator first began with the new training phase where the investigator interacted with the child while moving an object in front of the child's face while assigning a name to the object. For example, in one case he stated: "The...middle of the sheet......similar to a divergent assessment, except that a second set of novel objects was used (i.e. i.e. the interviewer was seated across from the child). and placed the child's toy in the child's hand and placed the investigator's toy in the child's own palm). In this test, rather than focusing on her object while she spoke, the examiner turned forward, looking directly at the child and her toy as she introduced the novel label. The investigator began each triplet sentence only when the child was looking at their own toy, and the same procedure was used to utter the triplet sentences (Luyster, R et al., 2009, p. 1779). The independent variable in these studies would be the child's focus on their toy, because in each study the child was consistently focused on their own toy. The independent variable would be the interviewer's gaze and the toy sets used