Wales Autism Research Centre, School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Tower Building, Cardiff, UK.
Autism Res. 2013 Jun;6(3):177-89. doi: 10.1002/aur.1274. Epub 2013 Feb 21.
It is widely accepted that we use contextual information to guide our gaze when searching for an object. People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) also utilise contextual information in this way; yet, their visual search in tasks of this kind is much slower compared with people without ASD. The aim of the current study was to explore the reason for this by measuring eye movements. Eye movement analyses revealed that the slowing of visual search was not caused by making a greater number of fixations. Instead, participants in the ASD group were slower to launch their first saccade, and the duration of their fixations was longer. These results indicate that slowed search in ASD in contextual learning tasks is not due to differences in the spatial allocation of attention but due to temporal delays in the initial-reflexive orienting of attention and subsequent-focused attention. These results have broader implications for understanding the unusual attention profile of individuals with ASD and how their attention may be shaped by learning.
人们普遍认为，我们在搜索物体时会利用上下文信息来引导视线。自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）患者也以这种方式利用上下文信息；然而，与没有 ASD 的人相比，他们在这种类型的视觉搜索任务中要慢得多。本研究的目的是通过测量眼球运动来探究其中的原因。眼球运动分析表明，视觉搜索的减速并不是由于注视次数的增加。相反，ASD 组的参与者的第一次扫视启动更慢，并且他们的注视时间更长。这些结果表明，在语境学习任务中，ASD 中的搜索速度较慢并不是由于注意力的空间分配不同，而是由于注意的初始反射性定向和随后的集中注意力的时间延迟。这些结果对理解 ASD 个体异常的注意力特征以及他们的注意力如何受到学习的影响具有更广泛的意义。
