A common example of social differences in autism spectrum disorder is poor modulation of reciprocal gaze, including reduced duration of eye contact and difficulty detecting the aim of another's gaze. It remains unclear, however, whether such differences are specific to the social domain, or are instead indicative of broader alterations in processes of visual engagement and disengagement in autism spectrum disorder. To assess whether children with autism spectrum disorder experience altered engagement of visual attention, and whether such processes are specific to social stimuli, we implemented a gap-overlap eye-tracking paradigm consisting of both social and nonsocial images with children with autism spectrum disorder (n = 35) and typical development (n = 32). Children with autism spectrum disorder demonstrated a significantly reduced overall gap effect (i.e. difference in saccade latency to peripheral stimuli between overlap and gap trials) compared with the controls. This reduction spanned both social and nonsocial conditions. Our findings suggest that children with autism spectrum disorder experience alterations in general processes of engagement of visual attention, and that these alterations are not specific to the social domain, but do associate with cognitive functioning. Affected processes of visual engagement in autism spectrum disorder may contribute to features like poor reciprocal gaze, but social-specific symptoms of autism spectrum disorder likely originate from other subcortical processes or higher order cognition.