Visual orienting in the early broader autism phenotype: disengagement and facilitation

Abstract

Infant siblings of children with autism showed longer Disengagement latencies as well as less Facilitation relative to the control group. The findings are discussed in relation to how differences in visual attention may relate to characteristics observed in autism and the broader phenotype.

Exploring the Nature of Joint Attention Impairments in Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Associated Social and Cognitive Skills

“…In Overlap trials, the latency to attend to the peripheral stimulus was a measure of the ability to disengage and shift attention. Similar to Elsabbagh et al (2009), a disengagement difference score (Overlap trials -Baseline trials) was computed to express the ability to disengage from the central stimulus. Lower disengagement difference scores reflected faster attention disengagement.…”

“…More research is needed in young children with ASD, but as some studies have shown, there may be attentional problems related to the disorder (Elsabbagh et al, 2009;Landry & Bryson, 2004;Renner, Klinger, & Klinger, 2006), supporting the view that these problems may be related to joint attention problems.…”

Social and attention factors during infancy and the later emergence of autism characteristics

“…Putative BAP effects have been reported in visual processing (McCleery, Allman, Carver, & Dobkins, 2007), flexibility of switching attention (Elsabbagh, Volein, Holmboe, et al, 2009), and inhibitory control (Holmboe et al, 2010a). Direct measurement of brain activity has also revealed early differences in response to face stimuli (McCleery, Akshoomoff, Dobkins, & Carver, 2009) and in sensitivity to the direction of eye gaze (Elsabbagh, Volein, Csibra, et al, 2009).…”

“…Event-Related-Potentials in response to static gaze direction (Elsabbagh, Volein, Holmboe, et al, 2009)…”

Neural network modelling of the influence of channelopathies on reflex visual attention

“…Furthermore, the mammalian visual systems are among the least misunderstood central nervous subsystems (Turiel and Parga 2003), and numerous computational models exist that accurately predict properties of the human visual system. Finally, several studies have revealed abnormal reflex orientation of visual attention in ASD subjects [see for instance (Elsabbagh et al 2009;Geest et al 2001;Townsend et al 1996Townsend et al , 2001Zwaigenbaum et al 2005)]. Altogether, these properties make the study of the reflex orientation of attention in the visual system a prime candidate for the projection of the effects of calcium channelopathy on behaviour.…”