Department of Personality, Evaluation, and Psychological Treatments, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain.
La Fe University and Polytechnic Hospital, Department of Psychiatry, Valencia, Spain; Neonatal Research Group, La Fe Health Research Institute, Valencia, Spain.
Res Dev Disabil. 2022 Jan;120:104124. doi: 10.1016/j.ridd.2021.104124. Epub 2021 Nov 12.
Different attentional processing of emotional information may underlie social impairments in Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC). It has been hypothesized that individuals with ASC show hypersensitivity to threat, which may be related to an avoidance behaviour. However, research on the attentional processing of emotional information in autism is inconclusive.
To examine the attentional processing biases of 27 children with ASC and 25 typically developed (TD) participants.
The initial orienting of attention, the attentional engagement, and the attentional maintenance to complex emotional scenes in competition (happy, neutral, threatening, sad) were assessed in a 20-second eye-tracking based free-viewing task.
i) children with ASC showed an initial orienting bias towards threatening stimuli; ii) TD children demonstrated an attentional engagement and maintenance bias towards threat, while children with ASC did not; and iii) in children with ASC, attentional problems and somatic complaints were associated with higher initial orienting and with higher attentional maintenance towards threat, respectively.
These results suggest that a perceived threat induces an early overwhelming response in autism, giving rise to an avoidance behaviour. The findings endorse affective information processing theories and shed light on the mechanisms underlying social disturbances in ASC.
不同的注意力处理情绪信息可能是孤独症谱系障碍（ASC）社交障碍的基础。有人假设，ASC 个体对威胁表现出过度敏感，这可能与回避行为有关。然而，关于孤独症中情绪信息注意力处理的研究尚无定论。
检查 27 名 ASC 儿童和 25 名典型发育（TD）参与者的注意力处理偏差。
在 20 秒基于眼动追踪的自由观看任务中，评估了对复杂情绪场景（快乐、中性、威胁、悲伤）的注意力初始定向、注意力参与和注意力维持。
i）ASC 儿童对威胁刺激表现出初始定向偏见；ii）TD 儿童对威胁表现出注意力参与和维持偏见，而 ASC 儿童则没有；iii）在 ASC 儿童中，注意力问题和躯体抱怨分别与更高的初始定向和更高的注意力维持与威胁相关。
这些结果表明，感知到的威胁会在孤独症中引起早期压倒性反应，从而导致回避行为。这些发现支持情感信息处理理论，并阐明了 ASC 中社交障碍的潜在机制。
