Rhythmic attentional sampling in autism.
Xiaoxu Fan, Tamar Kolodny, Kristin M Woodard and 6 others
PMID 37676241WHAT IT FOUND
Rhythmic attention sampling was similar in 29 autistic adults and 29 non-autistic adults.
The main result was no group difference. In 8 autistic adults with ADHD, a small exploratory analysis showed no rhythmic pattern, so it is not evidence of a separate attention pattern.
Key findings
01Rhythmic attention sampling was observed in both autistic and non-autistic adults, and the peak frequency did not differ between groups.
02An alternative analysis that accounts for non-rhythmic temporal structure confirmed significant oscillations in both groups.
03In 8 autistic participants with ADHD, no significant oscillation was observed and peak frequency was significantly lower, but this was exploratory.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
Only autistic adults with average or above IQ were studied, so results may not apply to the broader autistic community. The ADHD finding came from 8 autistic participants with self-reported ADHD, and the study did not formally evaluate ADHD or measure ADHD traits. The ADHD analysis was exploratory, not the main test, so it should not be treated as evidence of a separate attention pattern. Analyses of uncued locations were preliminary because each condition had few trials. False alarm rates were higher than typical for this task.
Declared interests
The authors declared no commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that autism changes rhythmic attention sampling, or that ADHD status explains attention differences in autism. The main comparison showed no difference between autistic and non-autistic adults. The ADHD finding came from 8 participants in an exploratory analysis.