University of Roehampton, UK.
University of Oxford, UK.
Autism. 2021 Aug;25(6):1721-1733. doi: 10.1177/13623613211001619. Epub 2021 Mar 19.
Previous research has shown that autistic individuals look at other people less and orient to them more slowly than others. Yet, it is still unclear if this represents general visual differences (e.g. slower looking at any new information, social or not) or a uniquely social difference (e.g. only slower looking to humans but not objects). Here, we aimed to examine how quickly autistic and non-autistic adults look to and away from social (i.e. faces) and non-social information (i.e. squares and houses). We used an attentional shifting task with two images where sometimes the first image disappears before the new image appears (makes it easier to notice the new image) and other times it stays on the screen when the new image appears. In Experiment 1, we showed schematic faces and squares to 27 autistic and 26 non-autistic adults, and in Experiment 2, we showed photographs of faces and houses to 18 autistic and 17 non-autistic adults. In general, autistic adults looked at the new non-social or social images similarly to non-autistic adults. Yet, only autistic adults looked at new social information faster when the first image disappeared before the new image appeared. This shows that autistic individuals may find it easier to notice new social information if their attention is not already occupied.
先前的研究表明，自闭症患者比其他人更少地注视他人，也更慢地将注意力转移到他人身上。然而，目前尚不清楚这是否代表一般的视觉差异（例如，对任何新信息的观察速度较慢，无论是否具有社会性），还是独特的社会性差异（例如，仅对人类的观察速度较慢，而对物体的观察速度则正常）。在这里，我们旨在检查自闭症和非自闭症成年人对社会信息（即面孔）和非社会信息（即正方形和房屋）的注视和转移速度。我们使用了一种注意力转移任务，其中两个图像有时会在新图像出现之前先消失（这使得更容易注意到新图像），而在其他时候，新图像出现时，旧图像仍会保留在屏幕上。在实验 1 中，我们向 27 名自闭症成年人和 26 名非自闭症成年人展示了示意图面孔和正方形，在实验 2 中，我们向 18 名自闭症成年人和 17 名非自闭症成年人展示了面孔和房屋的照片。总的来说，自闭症成年人对新的非社会性或社会性图像的注视与非自闭症成年人相似。然而，只有当新图像出现之前旧图像先消失时，自闭症成年人才会更快地注视新的社会性信息。这表明，如果自闭症患者的注意力没有被其他事物占据，他们可能会更容易注意到新的社会性信息。
