Abstract:
A core feature of Autistic Spectrum Condition (ASC) is the presence of difficulties in social interactions. This can be explained by an atypical attentional processing of social information: individuals with ASC may show problems with orienting attention to socially relevant stimuli and/or inhibiting their attentional responses to irrelevant ones. To shed light on this issue, we examined attentional orienting and inhibitory control to emotional stimuli (angry, happy, and neutral faces). An antisaccade task (with both prosaccade and antisacade blocks) was applied to a final sample of 29 children with ASC and 27 children with typical development (TD). Whereas children with ASC committed more antisaccade errors when seeing angry faces than happy or neutral ones, TD children committed more antisaccade errors when encountering happy faces than neutral faces. Furthermore, latencies in the prosaccade and antisaccade blocks were longer in children with ASC and they were associated with the severity of ASC symptoms. Thus, children with ASC showed an impaired inhibitory control when angry faces were presented. This bias to negative high-arousal information is congruent with affective information-processing theories on ASC, suggesting that threatening stimuli induce an overwhelming response in ASC. Therapeutic strategies where train the shift attention to emotional stimuli (i.e. faces) may improve ASC symptomatology and their socials functioning.
摘要:
自闭症谱系条件(ASC)的核心特征是社交互动中存在困难。这可以通过对社会信息的非典型注意处理来解释:患有ASC的个人可能会表现出将注意力定向到与社会相关的刺激和/或抑制他们对无关的注意力反应的问题。为了阐明这个问题,我们检查了对情绪刺激的注意取向和抑制控制(愤怒,快乐,和中性面孔)。对29名ASC儿童和27名具有典型发育(TD)儿童的最终样本进行了反扫视任务(同时使用前视和反扫视)。尽管患有ASC的孩子在看到愤怒的面孔时犯了更多的反扫视错误,而不是快乐或中立的面孔,与中性面孔相比,TD儿童在遇到快乐面孔时会犯更多的反扫视错误。此外,ASC患儿的前视阻滞和抗扫视阻滞潜伏期更长,并且与ASC症状的严重程度相关.因此,当出现愤怒的面孔时,患有ASC的儿童表现出抑制控制受损。这种对负面高唤醒信息的偏见与ASC的情感信息处理理论是一致的,这表明威胁性刺激会在ASC中引起压倒性的反应。将注意力转移到情绪刺激(即面部)的治疗策略可以改善ASC症状学及其社交功能。