Brief Report: Attentional Cueing to Images of Social Interactions is Automatic for Neurotypical Individuals But Not Those with ASC.
Marcus Neil Morrisey, Catherine L Reed, Daniel N McIntosh and 1 others
PMID 29696525WHAT IT FOUND
Neurotypical participants responded faster when a body posture implied throwing to a person, even when the cue did not predict the target; participants with ASC did not show this automatic attention shift.
Key findings
01Overall reaction times were faster on validly cued trials than invalidly cued trials (mean 435 versus 459), and faster at the 300 ms cue-target delay than at 150 ms (mean 431 versus 462).
02In non-predictive trials, neurotypical participants showed an automatic attention shift only in the social context at the 300 ms delay (valid minus invalid = -38 ms), in contrast to participants with ASC.
03When cues predicted target location, the social context affected groups differently: participants with ASC were slower on social trials and neurotypical participants were slower on non-social trials.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The analysed sample was 21 neurotypical and 20 participants with ASC, and the ASC group was the total number available in this age group at the recruitment site. Two participants were removed as overly influential data points before analysis. The social and non-social flankers differed in more than social status: human figures were directional, while trees were symmetrical. The task was a computer-based reaction-time test, not a measure of real-world social interaction or communication. Participants with ASC were recruited through a local residential facility.
Declared interests
The supplied text reports funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as evidence that people with ASC cannot use social cues. They benefited from predictive cues, and the difference was automatic attention shifting to uninformative social cues in a computer-based image task.