Reduced visual disengagement but intact phasic alerting in young children with autism.
Johan Lundin Kleberg, Emilia Thorup, Terje Falck-Ytter
PMID 27696688WHAT IT FOUND
Children with autism showed slower visual disengagement than typically developing peers, but this delay was not worse or better when an alerting sound was played.
Both groups improved their reaction times with sound, suggesting alerting mechanisms function similarly while disengagement remains atypical.
Key findings
01Children with ASD had overall longer saccadic latencies (slower visual disengagement) than typically developing children.
02Auditory cues reduced saccadic latencies in both groups, but there was no interaction effect, meaning the benefit of alerting was similar for children with and without ASD.
03The study used a modified gap paradigm with dynamic stimuli and variable intervals, which may explain discrepancies with previous studies using static images.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
Small sample size (35 children total). The TD control group had a high nonverbal IQ, though not significantly different from the ASD group. Five children with ASD were excluded from the main analysis due to learning disability, limiting generalizability to that subgroup. Results contradict some previous studies that found no disengagement deficits in ASD, possibly due to the use of dynamic rather than static stimuli.
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that auditory alerting strategies will differentially help children with autism overcome visual disengagement deficits compared to their peers. The study found that while alerting sounds improved reaction times for everyone, the specific deficit in disengagement for children with autism remained unchanged relative to typically developing children.