Department of Psychology and Centre for Atypical Neurodevelopment, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.
Dev Psychopathol. 2020 Feb;32(1):243-256. doi: 10.1017/S0954579418001712.
There is evidence that individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) show an attention bias toward positive social-perceptual (happy) faces. Research has not yet considered whether this attention bias extends beyond social-perceptual stimuli to perceptually neutral stimuli that are paired with positive (trustworthy) biographical information. Fourteen participants with WS (mean age = 21 years, 1 month) learned to associate perceptually neutral faces with trustworthy (positive), neutral, or untrustworthy (negative) biographical information, before completing a dot-probe task where the same biographical faces were presented. The performance of the WS group was compared to two typically developing control groups, individually matched to the WS individuals on chronological age and mental age, respectively. No between-group bias toward untrustworthy characters was observed. The WS group displayed a selective attention bias toward trustworthy characters compared to both control groups (who did not show such a bias). Results support previous findings that indicate WS individuals show a preference for positive social-perceptual stimuli (happy faces) at the neurological, physiological, and attentional levels. The current findings extend this work to include a "top-down" positive bias. The implications of a positive bias that extends beyond social-perceptual stimuli (or "bottom-up" processes) in this syndrome are discussed.
有证据表明，威廉姆斯综合征（WS）患者对积极的社会知觉（快乐）面孔表现出注意力偏向。研究尚未考虑这种注意力偏向是否不仅限于社会知觉刺激，还扩展到与积极（值得信赖）传记信息配对的感知中性刺激。14 名 WS 患者（平均年龄=21 岁 1 个月）在完成呈现相同传记面孔的点探测任务之前，学会将感知中性面孔与值得信赖（积极）、中性或不值得信赖（消极）的传记信息相关联。WS 组的表现与两个发育正常的对照组进行了比较，对照组分别与 WS 个体在年龄和心理年龄上进行了个体匹配。未观察到对不可信角色的组间偏见。与两个对照组（对照组没有表现出这种偏见）相比，WS 组对值得信赖的角色表现出选择性注意力偏向。结果支持了先前的研究结果，表明 WS 个体在神经、生理和注意力水平上对积极的社会知觉刺激（快乐面孔）表现出偏好。目前的研究结果将这项工作扩展到包括“自上而下”的积极偏见。讨论了这种综合征中超越社会知觉刺激（或“自下而上”过程）的积极偏见的意义。
