title: Under-reactive but easily distracted: An fMRI investigation of attentional capture in autism spectrum disorder.
abstract: For individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), salient behaviorally-relevant information often fails to capture attention, while subtle behaviorally-irrelevant details commonly induce a state of distraction. The present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neurocognitive networks underlying attentional capture in sixteen high-functioning children and adolescents with ASD and twenty-one typically developing (TD) individuals. Participants completed a rapid serial visual presentation paradigm designed to investigate activation of attentional networks to behaviorally-relevant targets and contingent attention capture by task-irrelevant distractors. In individuals with ASD, target stimuli failed to trigger bottom-up activation of the ventral attentional network and the cerebellum. Additionally, the ASD group showed no differences in behavior or occipital activation associated with contingent attentional capture. Rather, results suggest that to-be-ignored distractors that shared either task-relevant or irrelevant features captured attention in ASD. Results indicate that individuals with ASD may be under-reactive to behaviorally-relevant stimuli, unable to filter irrelevant information, and that both top-down and bottom-up attention networks function atypically in ASD. Lastly, deficits in target-related processing were associated with autism symptomatology, providing further support for the hypothesis that non-social attentional processes and their neurofunctional underpinnings may play a significant role in the development of sociocommunicative impairments in ASD.
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA; Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA; Brain Development Imaging Laboratory, Department of Psychology, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA; Research on Autism and Development Lab, Department of Neurosciences, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA. Electronic address: bkeehn@purdue.edu.
authors.forename: Brandon
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Keehn
authors.affiliation: Brain Development Imaging Laboratory, Department of Psychology, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Aarti
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Nair
authors.affiliation: Alliant International University, San Diego, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Alan J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Lincoln
authors.affiliation: Research on Autism and Development Lab, Department of Neurosciences, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Jeanne
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Townsend
authors.affiliation: Brain Development Imaging Laboratory, Department of Psychology, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Ralph-Axel
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Müller
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D000067877:Autism Spectrum Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001921:Brain / Q000378:metabolism*; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Attention; Autism; fMRI