Visual attention and inhibitory control in children, teenagers and adults with autism without intellectual disability: results of oculomotor tasks from a 2-year longitudinal follow-up study (InFoR).
Anouck Amestoy, Etienne Guillaud, Giulia Bucchioni and 10 others
PMID 34774105WHAT IT FOUND
Adults with autism showed similar eye movement speeds to controls but made more errors when trying to look away from a target.
Teenagers with autism were faster than controls on this task, while children showed lower accuracy. These differences did not change over two years.
Key findings
01Participants with autism made more anticipatory eye movements than controls (9.1% vs 5.47%).
02Teenagers with autism had faster reaction times on the antisaccade task than typically developing teenagers (414.3 ms vs 553.49 ms).
03Over the two-year follow-up, eye movement performance remained stable for most measures, with no significant improvement in attention or inhibition for the autism group.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The study did not find a direct link to speech-language pathology, occupational therapy, or physical therapy practice. It is a basic science study on eye movements and attention. The sample size for the control group was small, particularly for teenagers and children. The control group was only tested once, so it is unclear if they would have shown similar developmental changes over time. The study did not include a separate ADHD control group, making it difficult to isolate whether some attentional issues were due to autism or comorbid ADHD. Age groups were broad, and gender was not matched between groups, which could influence impulsivity and reaction time results.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that faster reaction times in teenagers with autism on the antisaccade task indicate better inhibitory control. The study found that this group still made significantly more errors than controls, suggesting that speed may come at the cost of accuracy and that the underlying difficulty with inhibition persists.