Endogenous spatial attention: evidence for intact functioning in adults with autism.
Endogenous spatial attention is intact in high-functioning adults with autism—slower reaction times are present but not due to an attention-field deficit.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team asked adults with autism to watch a screen. An arrow pointed left or right. After a short wait, a target dot flashed somewhere.
Adults pressed a key when they saw the dot. Sometimes the arrow told the truth about where the dot would land. Sometimes it did not.
The test checked if their inner attention system worked like typical adults.
What they found
Adults with autism were a bit slower overall, but the arrow helped them just as much as it helped typical adults.
Accuracy and speed gains from the cue were the same in both groups. Inner spatial attention is intact in autism.
How this fits with other research
Weiss et al. (2001) looks like it disagrees. They saw slower attention shifting in high-functioning autism. The tasks differ. Their test made people jump from local to global shapes. Our target used simple arrow cues. Different demands, different results.
Fletcher-Watson et al. (2008) and McLennan et al. (2008) back up the target. Both found normal following of eye-gaze in adults with autism. Together, these studies show basic orienting works fine.
Fitzgerald et al. (2015) extends the story to teens. Behavior stayed intact even though their brain networks looked different. Behavior and brain do not always match.
Why it matters
You can stop blaming attention when an adult with autism learns slowly. Their basic ability to aim attention is intact. Use clear cues, give a little more time, and teach the skill you want instead of fixing a non-broken attention system.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Rapid manipulation of the attention field (i.e. the location and spread of visual spatial attention) is a critical aspect of human cognition, and previous research on spatial attention in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) has produced inconsistent results. In a series of three psychophysical experiments, we evaluated claims in the literature that individuals with ASD exhibit a deficit in voluntarily controlling the deployment and size of the spatial attention field. We measured the spatial distribution of performance accuracies and reaction times to quantify the sizes and locations of the attention field, with and without spatial uncertainty (i.e. the lack of predictability concerning the spatial position of the upcoming stimulus). We found that high-functioning adults with autism exhibited slower reaction times overall with spatial uncertainty, but the effects of attention on performance accuracies and reaction times were indistinguishable between individuals with autism and typically developing individuals in all three experiments. These results provide evidence of intact endogenous spatial attention function in high-functioning adults with ASD, suggesting that atypical endogenous attention cannot be a latent characteristic of autism in general.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2013 · doi:10.1002/aur.1269