Visual Search Performance in Children With ASD: A Combined Case-Control and Longitudinal Study.
Naisan Raji, Iskra Todorova, Leonie Polzer and 7 others
Three years later, children with ASD found the target faster but less accurately than typically developing peers.
At the start, the two groups performed the same. Within ASD, better search performance tracked with more social communication difficulty.
Key findings
1At baseline, accuracy and time to target did not differ significantly between the ASD and TD groups. At follow-up, ASD accuracy was lower (83% vs 94%) and time to target was shorter (contrast = -0.44).
2Within the ASD group, higher visual search accuracy and shorter time to target were both associated with higher parent-reported social communication scores (SRS-SF) at follow-up.
3No significant association was found between visual search parameters and restricted and repetitive behavior scores (RBS-R).
Still to come
How it was doneWhat they found
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The ASD group was predominantly low nonverbal IQ (mean 62, range 31-108), so findings may not generalise to higher-functioning children with ASD. The follow-up interval varied more in the TD group (mean 30.4 months, SD 10.8) than in the ASD group (mean 38.4 months, SD 1.55), making the two time points not perfectly parallel. Not all participants completed follow-up (60% of ASD, 53% of TD), and although dropout analyses were non-significant, dropout bias cannot be excluded. The number of valid trials per child was low (mean 9 at baseline, 6 at follow-up for ASD), limiting the precision of individual-level estimates. The task was a single-feature search; other studies have found different patterns with conjunct-feature tasks, so the finding may be task-specific. The RBS-R analysis was underpowered (post hoc power 15-66%), so the null finding for repetitive behaviors is inconclusive.
Declared interests
Funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and Goethe-Universitat Frankfurt. C.M.F. receives royalties for books on ASD, ADHD, and MDD and has served as a consultant for IQWiG, IGES, and Infectopharm in the last 3 years. N.B. receives royalties for lecturing in psychotherapy training and has received third-party funding from DFG, the Daimler and Benz Foundation, and the Johanna Quandt Young Academy. Other authors declare no conflicts.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the faster time to target as a clear ASD advantage in visual search. Accuracy was actually lower in the ASD group at follow-up, and the association between search performance and social communication scores is a within-group correlation, not evidence that better search causes more symptoms.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →