Child Psychiatry Service, Centre de Ressources Autisme, CHRU of Brest, Brest, France.
Université de Rennes 1, UMR CNRS 6552, Ethos, Laboratoire d'éthologie animale et humaine, 35042, Rennes Cedex, France.
Sci Rep. 2017 Aug 30;7(1):10029. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-09745-6.
Visual social attention is central to social functioning and learning and may act as a reinforcer. Social rivalry, which occurs when an individual is excluded from dyadic interactions, can promote interspecific learning by triggering attention. We applied it to an animal-assisted intervention, where the behaviour of ASD children was compared between an experimental (attention shift of the animal trainer from the dog-child to the dog only) and a control (attention maintained on the dyad) groups (study 1). The results show that ASD children are sensitive to the direction of (visual) social attention and may act, physically and visually, in order to regain it. When the animal trainer concentrated on the dog, the overall visual attention of the ASD children increased, suggesting a heightened awareness towards their environment. They oriented more towards the animal trainer and the dog, contrarily to the control group. The repetition of the procedure was even associated with increased joint attention with the animal trainer (study 2). Thus, ASD children do care about and seek human visual attention. They show an ability to adapt their social behaviour, which questions whether their known deficits in social competencies are hard wired or whether the deficits are in their expression.
视觉社交注意力是社交功能和学习的核心，可能起到强化作用。当个体被排除在两人互动之外时，就会发生社会竞争，这可能通过触发注意力来促进种间学习。我们将其应用于动物辅助干预中，在实验组（动物训练师将注意力从狗和孩子身上转移到狗身上）和对照组（注意力保持在两人互动上）中比较了 ASD 儿童的行为（研究 1）。结果表明，ASD 儿童对（视觉）社会注意力的方向很敏感，他们可能会通过身体和视觉动作来重新获得注意力。当动物训练师专注于狗时，ASD 儿童的整体视觉注意力增加，这表明他们对环境的意识增强。与对照组相比，他们更多地转向动物训练师和狗。重复该程序甚至与与动物训练师的共同注意力增加有关（研究 2）。因此，ASD 儿童确实关心并寻求人类的视觉注意力。他们表现出适应社交行为的能力，这使得人们质疑他们在社交能力方面已知的缺陷是天生的还是只是表现不佳。
