title: Bottom-up attention orienting in young children with autism.
abstract: We examined the impact of simultaneous bottom-up visual influences and meaningful social stimuli on attention orienting in young children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Relative to typically-developing age and sex matched participants, children with ASDs were more influenced by bottom-up visual scene information regardless of whether social stimuli and bottom-up scene properties were congruent or competing. This initial reliance on bottom-up strategies correlated with severity of social impairment as well as receptive language impairments. These data provide support for the idea that there is enhanced reliance on bottom-up attention strategies in ASDs, and that this may have a negative impact on social and language development.
authors.affiliation: Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences, Brown University, 190 Thayer St., Box 1821, Providence, RI, 02912, USA, dima_amso@brown.edu.
authors.forename: Dima
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Amso
authors.forename: Sara
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Haas
authors.forename: Elena
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Tenenbaum
authors.forename: Julie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Markant
authors.forename: Stephen J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Sheinkopf
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D014796:Visual Perception