title: Unimpaired Attentional Disengagement and Social Orienting in Children with Autism.
abstract: Visual attention is often hypothesized to play a causal role in the development of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Because attention shapes perception, learning, and social interaction, early deficits in attention could substantially impact the development of other perceptual and cognitive abilities. Here we test two key attentional phenomena thought to be disrupted in autism: attentional disengagement and social orienting. We find in a free viewing paradigm that both phenomena are present in high-functioning children with ASD (N=44; age 5-12 years) and are identical in magnitude to those in age- and IQ-matched typical children (N=40). While these attentional processes may malfunction in other circumstances, our data indicate that high-functioning children with ASD do not suffer from across-the-board disruptions of either attentional disengagement or social orienting. Combined with mounting evidence that other attentional abilities are largely intact, it seems increasingly unlikely that disruptions of core attentional abilities lie at the root of ASD.
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Cognitive Science and McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.
authors.forename: Jason
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Fischer
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Cognitive Science and McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.
authors.forename: Kami
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Koldewyn
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN.
authors.forename: Yuhong V
authors.initials: YV
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Cognitive Science and McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.
authors.forename: Nancy
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Kanwisher
keywords: ASD; attention; autism; disengage; eye tracking; face perception; free viewing; social attention; social orienting; vision