Visual Biases and Attentional Inflexibilities Differentiate Those at Elevated Likelihood of Autism: An Eye-Tracking Study

Abstract

Date Presented 03/28/20 This study examined attentional inflexibility for children at elevated likelihood (EL) for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) through use of eye tracking. The results indicate that the EL-ASD group had significantly fewer attention shifts from an area of interest to the rest of the screen. While we only assessed a static activity, we believe attentional inflexibilities are also present during occupational engagement, which has implications for OT practice. OT strategies to address this will also be discussed. Primary Author and Speaker: Stephanie Bristol Additional Authors and Speakers: Susan Agostine Contributing Authors: Aaron Dallman, Clare Harrop, Elizabeth Crais, Grace Baranek, Linda Watson

Experiential Learning Styles and Neurocognitive Phenomics

“…Ability to focus sustained attention on sensory stimuli for longer time shows high variance among people. In the case of some autistic people strong synchronization of sensory networks makes the shifts of attention between stimuli quite difficult, as it has been demonstrated in numerous experiments (Bristol et al 2020). This dimension has thus 3 extremes states, in which sensory, motor, or sensor-motor activity dominates.…”