Auditory Attention Deployment in Young Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Katherine A Emmons, Adrian Kc Lee, Annette Estes and 5 others
PMID 34013478WHAT IT FOUND
Young adults with autism performed worse than peers on a listening task with competing speakers.
They did not show the typical drop in accuracy when switching attention, likely because maintaining attention was already difficult for them.
Key findings
01Participants with ASD had lower overall accuracy than typically developing peers across all listening conditions.
02Unlike typically developing adults, the ASD group did not show a significant performance drop when switching attention between speakers compared to maintaining attention.
03The ASD group performed better when both spatial and voice cues were available to distinguish speakers, whereas the NT group did not benefit from having both cues compared to one.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Small sample size (11 per group) limits generalizability. Participants were all young adults (21–23 years); findings may not apply to children or older adults. Individual variability was high in the autism group, with some performing on par with controls. The study was preliminary and designed to generate hypotheses rather than confirm effects.
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that switching attention is easier for people with autism. The lack of a switch cost likely reflects that maintaining attention was already difficult, not that switching is efficient.