Quelques-unes de mes choses préférées: les intérêts circonscrits dans l'autisme ne sont pas accompagnés d'une attention accrue lors d'une tâche personnalisée d'attention sélective

Aperçu: G.M.

Les personnes autistes présentent généralement des intérêts circonscrits ou «spéciaux»: des zones d'intérêt obsessionnel dans une catégorie spécifique. La présente étude a étudié l'incidence de ces intérêts sur l'attention, un aspect de la connaissance autistique souvent signalé comme étant modifié. Dans les individus neurotypiques, l'intérêt et l'expertise ont montré une priorité d'attention automatique pour les articles connexes. Ici, les chercheurs examinent si ce changement d'attention est également observé dans l'autisme.

Les personnes neurotypiques ont montré la priorité d'attention prévue pour les images d'intérêt circonscrit, mais pas les éléments génériques, reflétant l'impact de leur intérêt et de leur expertise. Contrairement aux prédictions, les personnes autistes n'ont pas montré cette priorité: traitement des stimuli liés aux intérêts uniquement lorsque les demandes de tâches étaient faibles. L'attention portée aux images non liées aux intérêts circonscrits était équivalente dans les deux groupes. 

Mol Autism. 2017 Apr 12;8:20. doi: 10.1186/s13229-017-0132-1. eCollection 2017.

A few of my favorite things: circumscribed interests in autism are not accompanied by increased attentional salience on a personalized selective attention task

Parsons OE¹, Bayliss AP², Remington A³.

Author information

1

Autism Research Centre, Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, UK.

2

School of Psychology, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.

3

Centre for Research in Autism and Education, UCL Institute of Education, University College London, 55-59 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0NU UK.

Abstract

BACKGROUND:

Autistic individuals commonly show circumscribed or "special" interests: areas of obsessive interest in a specific category. The present study investigated what impact these interests have on attention, an aspect of autistic cognition often reported as altered. In neurotypical individuals, interest and expertise have been shown to result in an automatic attentional priority for related items. Here, we examine whether this change in salience is also seen in autism.


METHODS:

Adolescents and young adults with and without autism performed a personalized selective attention task assessing the level of attentional priority afforded to images related to the participant's specific interests. In addition, participants performed a similar task with generic images in order to isolate any effects of interest and expertise. Crucially, all autistic and non-autistic individuals recruited for this study held a strong passion or interest. As such, any differences in attention could not be solely attributed to differing prevalence of interests in the two groups. In both tasks, participants were asked to perform a central target-detection task while ignoring irrelevant distractors (related or unrelated to their interests). The level of distractor interference under various task conditions was taken as an indication of attentional priority.


RESULTS:

Neurotypical individuals showed the predicted attentional priority for the circumscribed interest images but not generic items, reflecting the impact of their interest and expertise. Contrary to predictions, autistic individuals did not show this priority: processing the interest-related stimuli only when task demands were low. Attention to images unrelated to circumscribed interests was equivalent in the two groups.


CONCLUSIONS:

These results suggest that despite autistic individuals holding an intense interest in a particular class of stimuli, there may be a reduced impact of this prior experience and expertise on attentional processing. The implications of this absence of automatic priority are discussed in terms of the behaviors associated with the condition.



PMID: 28413601

PMCID: PMC5389148

DOI: 10.1186/s13229-017-0132-1

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