Do people with autistic spectrum disorder show normal selection for attention? Evidence from change blindness

Abstract

People in the general population are typically very poor at detecting changes in pictures of complex scenes. The degree of this 'change blindness', however, varies with the content of the scene: when an object is semantically important or contextually inappropriate, people may be more effective at detecting changes. Two experiments investigated change blindness in people with autism, who are known from previous research to be efficient in detecting features yet poor at processing stimuli for meaning and context. The first experiment measured the effect of semantic information while the second investigated the role of context in directing attention. In each task, participants detected the dissimilarity between pairs of images. Both groups showed a main effect of image type in both experimental tasks, showing that their attention was directed to semantically meaningful and contextually inappropriate items. However, the autistic group also showed a greater difficulty detecting changes to semantically marginal items in the first experiment. Conclusions point to a normal selection of items for attention in people with autism spectrum disorders, although this may be combined with difficulty switching or disengaging attention.

Selective Attention and Perceptual Load in Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…In the results presented here, no evidence was found of any difference between the capacity of individuals with ASD and IQmatched controls. This is similar to the findings of Fletcher-Watson et al (2006) who demonstrated that the ability to detect changes was equivalent in both ASD and control groups, and may also be consistent with Burack's work (Burack et al, 2009a) that suggests differences will only be seen when developmental level is taken into account. The absence of any increased level of visual short-term memory capacity would suggest that the increased distraction at high perceptual load seen in ASD in experiments one and two is not due to increased capacity.…”

“…When shown videos with continuity errors, the adolescents with autism were significantly better at detecting the errors. A study by Fletcher-Watson et al (Fletcher-Watson et al, 2006), however, failed to show a difference between the ability of control individuals and individuals with ASD to detect changes in visual scenes. Likewise, Burack et al (2009a) also reported no difference in performance on a change detection task.…”

“…Though they then attribute this to a deficit in attentional gating, it may be that increased perceptual capacity is responsible. Furthermore, the conflicting reports regarding unaltered change-detection abilities (Burack et al, 2009b;Fletcher-Watson et al, 2006) may be explained within the perceptual load framework. These two studies used paradigms that involved participants detecting changes within pairs of pictures, whereas Smith and Milne required participants to detect continuity errors in film clips.…”

The eye gaze direction of an observed person can bias perception, memory, and attention in adolescents with and without autism spectrum disorder

“…This paradigm has been shown to be appropriate for use with highfunctioning individuals with ASD (Fletcher-Watson, Leekam, Turner & Moxon, 2006). Objects in various locations within a scene appeared and disappeared whilst gaze direction of the person in the photo was systematically manipulated between trials.…”

Do Faces Capture the Attention of Individuals with Williams Syndrome or Autism? Evidence from Tracking Eye Movements

“…However, it may not just be the detection of appropriate targets that differs for individuals with autism. Fletcher-Watson, Leekam, Turner and Moxon (2006) suggest that individuals who are high-functioning on the autistic spectrum show a typical attention selection strategy but this is combined with difficulty switching or disengaging attention. In much the same way as evidence proposing attention switching atypicalites in WS (e.g.…”