Attentional Differences in a Driving Hazard Perception Task in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders.
Elizabeth Sheppard, Editha van Loon, Geoffrey Underwood and 1 others
PMID 27866348WHAT IT FOUND
Adults with autism were slower to first look at hazards in driving videos, but identified similar numbers and responded just as quickly after looking.
The delay was in finding hazards, not in pressing the key.
Key findings
01Participants with ASD were slower to first fixate the source of the hazard than comparison participants, and this delay did not depend on whether the hazard came from a visible person or an obscured vehicle.
02The groups correctly identified similar numbers of hazards: median social hazards correct 8 versus 8, non-social hazards 8 versus 9, and all hazards 17 versus 18.
03After first looking at a hazard, the two groups did not differ in the time taken to press the key.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
Only 15 participants with ASD and 16 comparison participants were analysed for eye-tracking after exclusions for missing data, while behavioural accuracy used all recruited participants. All participants were male young adults who had not yet acquired a driving licence, so it does not show what happens for women or licensed drivers. The task was a short video hazard test, not real driving, and it did not include multiple competing hazards or on-road stress. The ASD group had lower verbal IQ, and the earlier narrowing of search in the ASD group was no longer significant when verbal IQ was adjusted. Medication use was not recorded. Accuracy may have been high because each clip had one clear hazard and the clip ended after the first key press.
Declared interests
The paper names the Leverhulme Trust as funder. It does not report other conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that adults with ASD are unsafe drivers or will fail hazard perception tests. They identified similar numbers of hazards in the videos, and the study used young male non-drivers in a lab task, not real road driving. Slower first fixation does not mean they failed to detect hazards.