Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
J Clin Exp Neuropsychol. 2011 Feb;33(2):210-7. doi: 10.1080/13803395.2010.501327. Epub 2010 Aug 5.
Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are associated with impaired attentional set shifting, which may reflect enhanced perseverative responding, enhanced learned irrelevance, and/or reduced novelty processing. We assessed the contribution of these potential error sources in ASD adults. A total of 17 ASD and 19 matched comparison individuals first solved a discrimination learning task. Thereafter, the participants faced three types of attentional shift, specifically designed to isolate the effect of the three possible error sources. ASD participants made more errors than comparison individuals in a shift implying a choice between a novel relevant stimulus attribute and a familiar attribute that was previously relevant but now irrelevant. However, they made fewer errors in a shift involving a choice between a novel irrelevant attribute and a familiar, previously irrelevant but now relevant attribute. The results in combination suggest that the performance difference, at least in the present shift task, is caused by reduced novelty processing in ASD participants.
自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）与注意力设定转移受损有关，这可能反映了持续反应增强、学习无关增强和/或新颖性处理减少。我们评估了这些潜在错误源在 ASD 成人中的贡献。共有 17 名 ASD 和 19 名匹配的对照组个体首先解决了一项辨别学习任务。此后，参与者面临三种类型的注意力转移，专门设计用于隔离三种可能的错误源的影响。与对照组个体相比，ASD 参与者在一个需要在新颖相关刺激属性和以前相关但现在不相关的熟悉属性之间做出选择的转移中犯了更多的错误。然而，他们在一个涉及在新颖无关属性和熟悉的、以前无关但现在相关的属性之间做出选择的转移中犯的错误更少。这些结果表明，至少在目前的转移任务中，表现差异是由于 ASD 参与者的新颖性处理减少所致。
