Attentional shifting differences in autism: Domain general, domain specific or both?
Clear the screen before you show a face—autistic adults look just as fast as anyone when the prior image vanishes first.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Skripkauskaite et al. (2021) tested how autistic adults shift their attention to new pictures. Half the pictures showed people; half showed objects. The team timed how fast participants looked when the old picture stayed on screen versus when it vanished first.
All adults sat at a computer. Eye-trackers watched where they looked. Trials began with a cross, then a picture, then a second picture left or right. The key twist: sometimes the first picture stayed; sometimes it disappeared before the second appeared.
What they found
Autistic and non-autistic adults shifted equally fast to objects. For social pictures, autistic adults were slower only when the first picture stayed on screen. If the first picture vanished, autistic adults shifted just as quickly as non-autistic peers.
The result points to attention load, not social meaning, as the hurdle. Removing the old stimulus lightened the load and erased the group difference.
How this fits with other research
Weiss et al. (2001) once reported slower attention shifts in high-functioning autism. Their task kept the first image on screen, matching the harder condition in Simona’s study. The older finding now looks like a load effect, not a fixed social deficit.
Faso et al. (2016) showed intact face detection in autism when participants chose where to look. Simona’s work extends this: even reflexive social shifts work fine if you first clear the visual clutter.
Benson et al. (2016) found autistic adults needed more looks to spot social oddities. Simona adds a practical fix: let the previous image disappear and the first look becomes faster.
Why it matters
You can speed up social attention without teaching social skills. Simply remove or fade the prior stimulus before introducing a new face, photo, or video clip. Try this during discrete-trial instruction, slide-based lessons, or when shifting between PECS cards. One small visual tweak can give learners a faster, more confident entry into the social scene.
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Fade the current card to black for 200 ms before you present the next social picture during trials.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Previous research has shown that autistic individuals look at other people less and orient to them more slowly than others. Yet, it is still unclear if this represents general visual differences (e.g. slower looking at any new information, social or not) or a uniquely social difference (e.g. only slower looking to humans but not objects). Here, we aimed to examine how quickly autistic and non-autistic adults look to and away from social (i.e. faces) and non-social information (i.e. squares and houses). We used an attentional shifting task with two images where sometimes the first image disappears before the new image appears (makes it easier to notice the new image) and other times it stays on the screen when the new image appears. In Experiment 1, we showed schematic faces and squares to 27 autistic and 26 non-autistic adults, and in Experiment 2, we showed photographs of faces and houses to 18 autistic and 17 non-autistic adults. In general, autistic adults looked at the new non-social or social images similarly to non-autistic adults. Yet, only autistic adults looked at new social information faster when the first image disappeared before the new image appeared. This shows that autistic individuals may find it easier to notice new social information if their attention is not already occupied.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2021 · doi:10.1177/13623613211001619