Zhou Li, Zhang Li, Xu Yuening, Yang Fuyi, Benson Valerie
Faculty of Education, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China.
Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Big Data of Psychological and Cognitive Science, Yancheng Normal University, Yancheng 224000, China.
Brain Sci. 2022 Oct 28;12(11):1461. doi: 10.3390/brainsci12111461.
The current study aimed to investigate attentional processing differences for circumscribed interest (CI) and non-CI objects in young Chinese children with autism spectrum condition (ASC) and typically developing (TD) controls. In Experiment 1, a visual preference task explored attentional allocation to cartoon CI and non-CI materials between the two groups. We found that ASC children ( = 22, 4.95 ± 0.59 years) exhibited a preference for CI-related objects compared to non-CI objects, and this effect was absent in the TD children ( = 22, 5.14 ± 0.44 years). Experiment 2 utilized the traditional gap-overlap paradigm (GOP) to investigate attentional disengagement from CI or non-CI items in both groups (ASC: = 20, 5.92 ± 1.13 years; TD: = 25, 5.77 ± 0.77 years). There were no group or stimulus interactions in this study. Experiment 3 adopted a modified GOP (MGOP) to further explore disengagement in the two groups (ASC: = 20, 5.54 ± 0.95 years; TD: = 24, 5.75 ± 0.52 years), and the results suggested that exogenous disengagement performance was preserved in the ASC group, but the children with ASC exhibited increased endogenous attentional disengagement compared to TD peers. Moreover, endogenous disengagement was influenced further in the presence of CI-related objects in the ASC children. The current results have implications for understanding how the nature of engagement and disengagement processes can contribute to differences in the development of core cognitive skills in young children with ASC.
本研究旨在调查患有自闭症谱系障碍（ASC）的中国幼儿与发育正常（TD）的对照组在对限定兴趣（CI）和非CI对象的注意力加工方面的差异。在实验1中，一项视觉偏好任务探索了两组之间对卡通CI和非CI材料的注意力分配。我们发现，与非CI对象相比，ASC儿童（n = 22，4.95±0.59岁）对与CI相关的对象表现出偏好，而TD儿童（n = 22，5.14±0.44岁）则没有这种效应。实验2采用传统的间隙-重叠范式（GOP）来研究两组（ASC：n = 20，5.92±1.13岁；TD：n = 25，5.77±0.77岁）从CI或非CI项目上脱离注意力的情况。本研究中没有组间或刺激交互作用。实验3采用改良的GOP（MGOP）进一步探索两组（ASC：n = 20，5.54±0.95岁；TD：n = 24，5.75±0.52岁）的脱离情况，结果表明ASC组的外源性脱离表现得以保留，但与TD同龄人相比，患有ASC的儿童表现出内源性注意力脱离增加。此外，在ASC儿童中，与CI相关的对象的存在进一步影响了内源性脱离。目前的结果对于理解参与和脱离过程的性质如何导致患有ASC的幼儿核心认知技能发展的差异具有启示意义。
