Attentional influences on neural processing of biological motion in typically developing children and those on the autism spectrum.
Emily J Knight, Aaron I Krakowski, Edward G Freedman and 3 others
PMID 35850696WHAT IT FOUND
Children with autism identified human motion as accurately as peers, but their brains did not automatically prioritize it.
They only showed typical neural responses when explicitly asked to judge if the motion looked human. This suggests attention, not perception, drives social differences.
Key findings
01Behavioral performance in identifying biological motion did not differ significantly between the autism and neurotypical groups.
02Neurotypical children showed automatic neural differentiation of biological motion even when distracted, whereas children with autism only showed this pattern when explicitly attending to the stimuli.
03In children with autism, stronger neural responses to biological motion during the attended task were associated with better real-world social adaptive skills.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study included only high-functioning children with IQs above 70, so results may not apply to children with intellectual disability. The age range (6-16 years) is broad, and developmental changes in brain activity were observed, making it difficult to isolate ASD-specific effects from general maturation without a larger sample. The study was not powered to fully separate the effects of ASD from co-occurring attention deficits, though only one participant in the ASD group had a formal ADHD diagnosis. The cross-sectional design cannot determine if the neural differences cause social difficulties or result from them.
Declared interests
The authors declared no competing interests. The work was supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that children with autism are 'blind' to social motion. They perceive it accurately when asked to look. The deficit is in the automatic, involuntary prioritization of these stimuli, which means they may miss social cues in busy environments unless they are explicitly taught to attend to them.