Lack of Privileged Access to Awareness for Rewarding Social Scenes in Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Katie L H Gray, Anthony Haffey, Hristina L Mihaylova and 1 others
PMID 29728947WHAT IT FOUND
Typical adults recognised rewarding social scenes faster than non-social ones, even when hidden from conscious awareness.
Adults with autism showed no such advantage. This suggests social information does not automatically draw attention in autism, potentially affecting early social learning.
Key findings
01In typical adults, social scenes broke through visual suppression faster than non-social scenes, but this advantage disappeared when the images were inverted and contrast-negated.
02In adults with autism, there was no difference in response times between social and non-social scenes, regardless of whether the images were normal or manipulated.
03Bayesian analysis provided strong evidence for the null model in the autism group, supporting the absence of a social attention advantage.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The autism group was older (mean age 37) than the typical group (mean age 21), which may explain their slower overall response times. The autism sample was high-functioning, so results may not apply to individuals with greater cognitive impairments. Eight participants in the autism group did not meet the ADOS cut-off score, though re-analysis excluding them yielded the same results. The study used static images, which may not reflect dynamic real-world social interactions.
Declared interests
No conflicts of interest or specific funding sources were declared in the provided text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the slower overall response times in the autism group as a general visual processing deficit. The lack of social advantage was specific to the social content, not a result of the images being harder to see or respond to in general.