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Author Notes:

Jared A. Nielsen, jarednielsen@byu.edu

JO, JM, BB, and JN developed stimulus and experiment design. SK, JO, JM, and HB scheduled participants and administered protocol. HB, JM, JO, and SK processed the data and verified the inter-rater reliability. RL and SK conducted initial literature review and wrote introduction. SK, JO, and HB described methods and materials. SK, JO, and JN developed the analysis script in R and wrote results and conclusions. SK and JN developed script for statistical figures. JO finalized designs, created original methods illustrations, wrote all image captions, and prepared the data files and analysis scripts for sharing on the Open Science Framework. SK and JO wrote the discussion and conclusion. TG and MS verified clinical interpretation of results and provided insight into potential sex differences. RL and JN supervised the manuscript. All authors participated in reviewing, editing, and revising the manuscript.

We would like to thank all our participants for their valuable insights while we conducted this research. Our appreciation extends to BYU’s Jordan Yorgason and Scott Steffensen for allowing us to use their LabView program for participant reporting. We also thank fellow research assistants Hayden Wood and Lauren Parker for assisting with participant scheduling and data collection and Karys Normansell of the BYU Clinical Psychology Department for administering diagnostic measures. A subset of participants in this study are included in an undergraduate thesis previously posted to BYU’s ScholarsArchive (49).

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Subjects:

Research Funding:

We would like to thank donors for the following funding, without which our research would not be possible: The Honors Office at Brigham Young University (BYU) for funding to SK; Experiential Learning at Brigham Young University for funding to JO; Inter-Disciplinary Research Origination Award program at BYU for funding to JN, TG, MS, and RL; a Mentoring Environment Grant from BYU for funding to RL; and the Burnham Family Foundation for funding to RL.

Keywords:

  • Science & Technology
  • Life Sciences & Biomedicine
  • Psychiatry
  • binocular rivalry
  • autism
  • social anxiety
  • social anxiousness
  • switch rates
  • SPECTRUM QUOTIENT AQ
  • ANXIETY DISORDER
  • ATTENTIONAL BIAS
  • PSYCHOMETRIC PROPERTIES
  • VISUAL CONSCIOUSNESS
  • THREAT
  • MODEL
  • FACES
  • EXCITATION/INHIBITION
  • RELIABILITY

Binocular rivalry in autistic and socially anxious adults

Tools:

Journal Title:

FRONTIERS IN PSYCHIATRY

Volume:

Volume 14

Publisher:

, Pages 1181797-1181797

Type of Work:

Article | Final Publisher PDF

Abstract:

Background: Social anxiousness is a pervasive symptom in both social anxiety disorder and autism spectrum conditions. Binocular rivalry, which occurs when different images are presented to each eye, has been used to explore how visual and cognitive processing differs across various clinical diagnoses. Previous studies have separately explored whether individuals with autism or anxiety experience binocular rivalry in ways that are different from neurotypical individuals. Methods: We applied rivalry paradigms that are similar to those used in previous studies of autism and general anxiety to individuals experiencing symptoms of social anxiousness at clinical or subclinical levels. We also incorporated rivalrous stimuli featuring neutral and emotional facial valances to explore potential overlap of social processing components in social anxiety and autism. Results: We hypothesized that higher levels of social anxiousness would increase binocular rivalry switch rates and that higher levels of autistic traits would decrease switch rates. However, stimulus condition did not affect switch rates in either diagnostic group, and switch rate was not significantly predictive of dimensional measures of either autism or social anxiety. Discussion: This may suggest a common mechanism for atypical visual cognition styles previously associated with social anxiety and autism. Alternatively, differences in switch rates may only emerge at higher trait levels than reported by the participants in our studies. Furthermore, these findings may be influenced by sex differences in our unique sample.

Copyright information:

© 2023 Kamhout, Olivier, Morris, Brimhall, Black, Gabrielsen, South, Lundwall and Nielsen.

This is an Open Access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
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