Top-down attentional modulation in autistic spectrum disorders is stimulus-specific.
This study investigated top-down modulation of bottom-up attentional capture in children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs) and in a typically developing (TD) comparison group using a spatial-cuing task (Experiment 1) and a series of visual search tasks (Experiment 2) employing task-irrelevant distractors. The effect of color and onset singleton distractors was investigated. The TD group showed similar top-down modulation of color and onset stimuli. The ASD group showed typical top-down modulation of color stimuli, but impaired top-down modulation of onset stimuli. The results suggest that children with ASDs may be impaired at prioritizing dynamic stimuli; this has implications for social processing impairments in ASDs.
Greenaway
Rebecca
R
University of Cambridge, Cambridge. United Kingdom.
Plaisted
Kate
K
D001288:Attention; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002648:Child; D003463:Cues; D006801:Humans; D011930:Reaction Time; D013028:Space Perception