Autism and attention: Theoretical considerations and a pilot study using set reaction time

Gold, Mark S.; Gold, Janice R.

doi:10.1007/bf01438301

Cited by 25 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…For over 40 years autistic children have been described as extremely unresponsive to educational and social stimuli (e.g., Gersten, 1978Gersten, , 1980Gold & Gold, 1975;Hermelin & O'Connor, 1964;Kanner, 1944;Lovaas 1966;Lovaas, Berberich, Perloff, & Schaeffer, 1966;Prior, 1977). Although autistic children are commonly portrayed as aloof and unresponsive, data obtained in this investigation support the idea that their lack of normal responsivity to environmental stimuli may be related to the number of components contalned within the stimuli.…”

Section: Implications For Understanding Autistic Children's Developmentsupporting

confidence: 64%

Stimulus complexity and autistic children's responsivity: Assessing and training a pivotal behavior

Burke

Cerniglia

1990

J Autism Dev Disord

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Interdisciplinary research suggests that autistic children's limitations in responding to environmental stimuli may be directly related to the number of components contained in the stimuli; as the number of components increases, such children hypothetically would exhibit greater difficulties in responding. The central purpose of this experiment was to assess whether such children indeed exhibit greater difficulties in responding as the number of components contained in an environmental stimulus was increased from one to four. If the children's responsivity was a function of stimulus complexity, a second focus of this experiment was to assess the feasibility of teaching them to respond to a complex environmental stimulus containing up to four components and to determine whether the effects of the intervention would generalize to other situations involving complex structured and social stimuli. Data gathered using a multiple baseline design across behaviors and children indicate that all of the children exhibited fewer correct responses to a stimulus as the number of stimulus components was increased from one to four. The results further showed that the training program used in this investigation was effective in producing some generalized increases in the children's responses to complex structured and social stimuli. Conceptualizing autistic children's responses to complex multicomponent stimuli as a pivotal target behavior that can be operationally defined may have important implications for understanding and altering the children's responsivity and development.

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Section: Implications For Understanding Autistic Children's Developmentsupporting

confidence: 64%

Stimulus complexity and autistic children's responsivity: Assessing and training a pivotal behavior

Burke

Cerniglia

1990

J Autism Dev Disord

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“…The disorder seems to include defects in recognizing or making classifications (Hermelin, 1976;Rutter, 1978;Hoffmann & Prior, 1982) and defects in mechanisms of attention and orienting to novel stimulation (Gold & Gold, 1975;James & Barry, 1980;Kootz & Cohen, 1981). Opinions remain divided as to whether the defects in orienting are principally characterized by increased or decreased sensitivity to events, or both.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Event-related brain potential correlates of the processing of novel visual and auditory information in autism

Courchesne

Lincoln

Kilman³

et al. 1985

J Autism Dev Disord

173

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Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) elicited by visual and auditory stimuli were recorded from nonretarded individuals with autism (ages 13-25 years) and age-matched normal controls. In "no-task" conditions, subjects simply looked at or listened to these stimuli; only one difference was found between subject groups. Several ERP differences between groups were found in "task" conditions; subjects pressed a button at the occurrence of target stimuli intermixed with unexpected, novel stimuli and also with expected, nonnovel stimuli. Visual ERP abnormalities in the autistic group differed from auditory abnormalities. Results suggest that (1) nonretarded autistic individuals may have a limited capacity to process novel information--they are neither hypersensitive to novel information nor misperceive it as nonnovel and insignificant; (2) classification of simple visual information may be less impaired than auditory; and (3) with one exception, visual and auditory ERP abnormalities do not seem to reflect maturational delay.

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“…Two theories have been proposed for the mechanisms underlying the possible facial processing deficit: the attention deficit theory and the decoding deficit theory. The attention deficit theory [9] posits that individuals with autism spectrum disorders fail to pay sufficient attention, a process requiring the active selection of primary information and the disregarding insignificant information [10], for examining facial expressions. In consequence, individuals with autism spectrum disorders not only lose opportunities to perceive intricacies of facial expressions, but also miss transient facial expressions in daily encounters.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To measure the time allocated for such attention, it would be essential to apply a reaction-time paradigm that involves perceptions of and responses to stimuli. Although not focusing on facial stimuli, Gold and Gold [10] found a salient difference in reaction time between children with autistic disorder and control children in their pilot study, and proposed an attentional reaction-time model in which clinical features of autistic spectrum disorders would be explained by deficient attentional mechanisms [10]. Recently, functional brain imaging research has begun to identify neural substrates involved in selectively prioritizing attention to emotional information in monkeys [23].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The present study applies an attentional reaction-time paradigm [10] to recognition of static and moving facial expressions, and examines speed and accuracy for facial affect recognition in individuals with Asperger's disorder. In addition to attention, a decoding process must occur during the interval between the onset of facial stimuli and the response.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Reaction Time of Facial Affect Recognition in Asperger’s Disorder for Cartoon and Real, Static and Moving Faces

Miyahara

Bray²,

Tsujii

et al. 2007

Child Psychiatry Hum Dev

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This study used a choice reaction-time paradigm to test the perceived impairment of facial affect recognition in Asperger's disorder. Twenty teenagers with Asperger's disorder and 20 controls were compared with respect to the latency and accuracy of response to happy or disgusted facial expressions, presented in cartoon or real images and in static or moving conditions. Group analysis revealed that the Asperger group did not differ significantly from the control group in speed and accuracy for both affects and in all presentation modalities. Individual analysis, however, revealed that the proportion of participants exhibiting a happy face advantage was smaller in the Asperger group than in the control group. The results did not support the notion of impairment in facial affect recognition in terms of speed and accuracy in Asperger's disorder. Findings also revealed that the absence of happy face advantage was more prevalent in individuals with Asperger's disorder.

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Autism and attention: Theoretical considerations and a pilot study using set reaction time

Cited by 25 publications

References 37 publications

Stimulus complexity and autistic children's responsivity: Assessing and training a pivotal behavior

Stimulus complexity and autistic children's responsivity: Assessing and training a pivotal behavior

Event-related brain potential correlates of the processing of novel visual and auditory information in autism

Reaction Time of Facial Affect Recognition in Asperger’s Disorder for Cartoon and Real, Static and Moving Faces

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