Atypical Attentional Effort During Visual Search in Autistic Adults: Evidence From Task-Evoked Pupillary Responses.
Zainab Naaran, Amit Yashar
PMID 42527387WHAT IT FOUND
Autistic adults showed no faster reaction times than non-autistic adults in visual search, but their pupils dilated less.
When the task became visually difficult, autistic adults were more accurate. This suggests they use less mental effort for similar speed, or better perception under pressure.
Key findings
01In the first experiment, reaction times did not differ significantly between autistic and non-autistic participants, but autistic participants showed smaller task-evoked pupil dilations.
02In the second experiment, using brief masked displays to increase perceptual demand, autistic participants were significantly more accurate than non-autistic participants.
03Both groups demonstrated similar intertrial priming effects, indicating comparable reliance on recent search history.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The study used a specific visual search task with isoluminant colors, which may not generalize to real-world attentional demands or other sensory modalities. Experiment 2 could not measure pupil dilation due to the masked brief displays, so the link between the physiological effort in Experiment 1 and the accuracy advantage in Experiment 2 is inferred rather than directly measured in the same condition. The sample sizes were modest, and the groups differed in sex distribution, though the authors state prior literature suggests this does not affect performance in this task.
Declared interests
The study was funded by the Israel Science Foundation. No other conflicts of interest are reported.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the smaller pupil dilation as a deficit in attention or arousal. The authors suggest it may reflect more efficient processing or a different attentional strategy, especially since these participants performed better under high perceptual demand.