Uono Shota, Sato Wataru, Toichi Motomi
Department of Cognitive Psychology in Education, Faculty of Education, Kyoto University, Yoshida-honmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan.
Brain Cogn. 2009 Dec;71(3):229-33. doi: 10.1016/j.bandc.2009.08.015. Epub 2009 Sep 24.
Although impaired joint attention is one of the core clinical features of pervasive developmental disorder including autistic disorder and Asperger's disorder, experimental studies failed to report its impairment. This discrepancy might be the result of differences between real-life and experimental situations. The present study examined joint attention in 11 individuals with Asperger's disorder and 11 age-matched controls under naturalistic conditions using a target detection paradigm with dynamic emotional gaze cues. Although both groups showed gaze-triggered attention orienting as assessed by the differences in reaction time for invalid minus valid cues, enhancement of joint attention by fearful (vs. neutral) gaze was observed in the control, but not in the Asperger group. This suggests that the integration of emotion and gaze direction that elicits strong joint attention is impaired in individuals with Asperger's disorder.
尽管联合注意受损是广泛性发育障碍（包括孤独症谱系障碍和阿斯伯格综合征）的核心临床特征之一，但实验研究却未能报告其受损情况。这种差异可能是现实生活情境与实验情境不同所致。本研究在自然情境下，使用带有动态情绪性注视线索的目标检测范式，对11名阿斯伯格综合征患者和11名年龄匹配的对照组进行联合注意研究。尽管两组在无效线索与有效线索反应时间差异所评估的注视触发注意定向方面均有表现，但对照组中观察到恐惧（相对于中性）注视增强了联合注意，而阿斯伯格组未观察到。这表明，阿斯伯格综合征患者在引发强烈联合注意的情绪与注视方向整合方面存在受损。
