Social Attention Deficits in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: Task Dependence of Objects vs. Faces Observation Bias

Social attention deficits represent a central impairment of patients suffering from autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but the nature of such deficits remains controversial. We compared visual attention regarding social (faces) vs. non-social stimuli (objects), in an ecological diagnostic context, in 46 children and adolescents divided in two groups: ASD (N = 23) and typical neurodevelopment (TD) (N = 23), matched for chronological age and intellectual performance. Eye-tracking measures of visual scanning, while exploring and describing scenes from three different tasks from the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS), were analyzed: Description of a Picture, Cartoons, and Telling a Story from a Book. Our analyses revealed a three-way interaction between Group, Task, and Social vs. Object Stimuli. We found a striking main effect of group and a task dependence of attentional allocation: while the TD attended first and longer to faces, ASD participants became similar to TD when they were asked to look at pictures while telling a story. Our results suggest that social attention allocation is task dependent, raising the question whether spontaneous attention deficits can be rescued by guiding goal-directed actions.

Automated summary

The study found that social attention deficits exist in patients with autism spectrum disorder, but they exhibit different characteristics in different tasks. Results suggest that social attention allocation is task-dependent, leading to the question of whether guiding goal-directed actions can help rescue spontaneous attention deficits.