The scope of social attention deficits in autism: Prioritized orienting to people and animals in static natural scenes

• Type of Material: Article
• Authors: Joshua J. New, Barnard College; Robert T. Schultz, Yale University; Julie Wolf, Yale University; Jeffrey L. Niehaus, University of California, Santa Barbara; Ami Klin, Emory University; Tamsin C. German, University of California, Santa Barbara; Brian J. Scholl, Yale University
• Language: English
• Date: 2010-01-01
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Publication Version: Author Accepted Manuscript (After Peer Review)
• Copyright Statement: © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
• License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International
• Final Published Version (URL): http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2009.08.008
• Title of Journal or Parent Work: Neuropsychologia
• ISSN: 0028-3932
• Volume: 48
• Issue: 1
• Start Page: 51
• End Page: 59
• Grant/Funding Information: BJS was supported by NSF grant #BCS-0132444.; TG was supported by a grant from the M.I.N.D. Institute, UC Davis.; JJN was supported by a National Research Service Award from NIMH.
• Keywords: Social attention; FUSIFORM FACE AREA; Life Sciences & Biomedicine; CHILDREN; BIOLOGICAL MOTION; Neurosciences; PERCEPTION; Visual attention; Animacy; CHANGE BLINDNESS; SPECTRUM DISORDER; VISUAL-ATTENTION; Social Sciences; Behavioral Sciences; Science & Technology; ABNORMAL-DEVELOPMENT; Neurosciences & Neurology; Psychology; Psychology, Experimental; Change detection; ASPERGER-SYNDROME; FUNCTIONING AUTISM; Autism spectrum disorder
• Research Categories: Biology, Neuroscience; Health Sciences, Mental Health; Psychology, Experimental

Abstract

A central feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is an impairment in 'social attention'-the prioritized processing of socially relevant information, e.g. the eyes and face. Socially relevant stimuli are also preferentially attended in a broader categorical sense, however: observers orient preferentially to people and animals (compared to inanimate objects) in complex natural scenes. To measure the scope of social attention deficits in autism, observers viewed alternating versions of a natural scene on each trial, and had to 'spot the difference' between them-where the difference involved either an animate or inanimate object. Change detection performance was measured as an index of attentional prioritization. Individuals with ASD showed the same prioritized social attention for animate categories as did control participants. This could not be explained by lower level visual factors, since the effects disappeared when using blurred or inverted images. These results suggest that social attention - and its impairment in autism - may not be a unitary phenomenon: impairments in visual processing of specific social cues may occur despite intact categorical prioritization of social agents.