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Abstract

Children with autism were compared to developmentally matched children with Down syndrome or typical development in terms of their ability to visually orient to two social stimuli (name called, hands clapping) and two nonsocial stimuli (rattle, musical jack-in-the-box), and in terms of their ability to share attention (following another's gaze or point). It was found that, compared to children with Down syndrome or typical development, children with autism more frequently failed to orient to all stimuli, and that this failure was much more extreme for social stimuli. Children with autism who oriented to social stimuli took longer to do so compared to the other two groups of children. Children with autism also exhibited impairments in shared attention. Moreover, for both children with autism and Down syndrome, correlational analyses revealed a relation between shared attention performance and the ability to orient to social stimuli, but no relation between shared attention performance and the ability to orient to nonsocial stimuli. Results suggest that social orienting impairments may contribute to difficulties in shared attention found in autism.

Speech–sound-selective auditory impairment in children with autism: They can perceive but do not attend

“…Therefore, it is feasible that the ''speechness'' quality of the vowel stimulus was the main factor compromising the autistic children's orienting. Consistent with the present ERP results, behavioral evidence indicates that children with autism orient and attend to physically complex nonsocial stimuli similarly as do their healthy peers but show deficient orienting to complex social stimuli (4,76).…”

“…This finding indicated that, to a certain extent, acoustic complexity might affect autistic children's orienting. However, according to existing behavioral evidence (4,76), it is unlikely that physical stimulus complexity could entirely account for social attention deficits in autism, because children with autism oriented to physically complex nonsocial stimuli similarly as their healthy peers.…”

“…They also spent more time looking at objects and less time looking at people. Further, 5-year-old children with autism oriented more poorly to social (both speech and nonspeech) than to nonsocial stimuli (4). Their impaired orienting to social stimuli correlated with the impairment of joint attention, one of the key features of autism.…”

Reward circuitry dysfunction in psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders and genetic syndromes: animal models and clinical findings

“…A number of theorists have suggested that the social-communication deficits that characterize ASDs reflect decreased motivation to engage in reciprocal social behaviors in infancy and early childhood, which may ultimately result in fewer experiences with social sources of information [550-552]. Because children with ASD may lack the motivation to participate in activities in which social skills are typically forged, the resulting relatively impoverished social environment may further compound the social impairment caused by low social motivation, and further negatively influence the development of social cognition and language skills [553,554].…”

“…Because children with ASD may lack the motivation to participate in activities in which social skills are typically forged, the resulting relatively impoverished social environment may further compound the social impairment caused by low social motivation, and further negatively influence the development of social cognition and language skills [553,554]. Consistent with this model, very young children with ASD display decreased orienting to social stimuli [550,555], and atypical social orienting has been shown to predict decreased social competence in adolescents and young adults with ASDs [556]. There is also evidence that social motivation remains impaired in individuals with ASD despite growth in other areas of cognitive development.…”