scholarly journals Error-monitoring in response to social stimuli in individuals with higher-functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camilla M. McMahon ◽  
Heather A. Henderson
Author(s):  
A. Meermeier ◽  
M. Jording ◽  
Y. Alayoubi ◽  
David H. V. Vogel ◽  
K. Vogeley ◽  
...  

AbstractIn this study we investigate whether persons with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) perceive social images differently than control participants (CON) in a graded perception task in which stimuli emerged from noise before dissipating into noise again. We presented either social stimuli (humans) or non-social stimuli (objects or animals). ASD were slower to recognize images during their emergence, but as fast as CON when indicating the dissipation of the image irrespective of its content. Social stimuli were recognized faster and remained discernable longer in both diagnostic groups. Thus, ASD participants show a largely intact preference for the processing of social images. An exploratory analysis of response subsets reveals subtle differences between groups that could be investigated in future studies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susana Mouga ◽  
João Castelhano ◽  
Cátia Café ◽  
Daniela Sousa ◽  
Frederico Duque ◽  
...  

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.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 372-381
Author(s):  
Patricia E. G. Bestelmeyer ◽  
Bethan Williams ◽  
Jennifer J. Lawton ◽  
Maria-Elena Stefanou ◽  
Kami Koldewyn ◽  
...  

Several recent studies have demonstrated reduced visual aftereffects, particularly to social stimuli, in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This putative impairment of the adaptive mechanism in ASD has been put forward as a possible explanation for some of the core social problems experienced by children with ASD (e.g., facial emotion or identity recognition). We addressed this claim in children with ASD and typically developing children by using an established methodology and morphed auditory stimulus set for eliciting robust aftereffects to vocal expressions and phonemes. Although children with ASD were significantly worse at categorizing the vocal expressions compared with the control stimuli (phoneme categorization), aftereffect sizes in both tasks were identical in the two participant groups. Our finding suggests that the adaptation mechanism is not universally impaired in ASD and is therefore not an explanation for the social perception difficulties in ASD.


2015 ◽  
Vol 112 (25) ◽  
pp. 7868-7872 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Turi ◽  
David C. Burr ◽  
Roberta Igliozzi ◽  
David Aagten-Murphy ◽  
Filippo Muratori ◽  
...  

Autism is known to be associated with major perceptual atypicalities. We have recently proposed a general model to account for these atypicalities in Bayesian terms, suggesting that autistic individuals underuse predictive information or priors. We tested this idea by measuring adaptation to numerosity stimuli in children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). After exposure to large numbers of items, stimuli with fewer items appear to be less numerous (and vice versa). We found that children with ASD adapted much less to numerosity than typically developing children, although their precision for numerosity discrimination was similar to that of the typical group. This result reinforces recent findings showing reduced adaptation to facial identity in ASD and goes on to show that reduced adaptation is not unique to faces (social stimuli with special significance in autism), but occurs more generally, for both parietal and temporal functions, probably reflecting inefficiencies in the adaptive interpretation of sensory signals. These results provide strong support for the Bayesian theories of autism.


Children ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (9) ◽  
pp. 112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa DeFilippis

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has a high rate of psychiatric comorbidity. The prevalence of comorbid depression seems to correlate with higher functioning forms of ASD and increasing age. Adolescence is a time when youth struggle with identity and interpersonal relationships, and a diagnosis of ASD further complicates this process. Adolescents with ASD may be more aware of the social communication deficits that come with the diagnosis than children with ASD, and it is theorized that higher functioning adolescents may experience this more acutely. While this may be true, the lack of reliable rating and diagnostic scales for depression in individuals with ASD makes it difficult to accurately measure rates of depression among individuals with more severe verbal deficits. While some research has focused on the prevalence of comorbid depression in children and adolescents with ASD and on the associated risk factors, there is very little evidence guiding treatment, including no empirical studies on psychopharmacology for depression in this population. Available evidence exists only in psychosocial approaches to treatment at this time and is mostly limited to adult studies. Current evidence will be presented in this review, including prevalence rates of depression in youth with ASD, various risk and protective factors, the use of diagnostic rating scales, and treatment studies. The lack of evidence supporting various treatment approaches will be highlighted, including challenges specific to the treatment of depression in ASD, which are not addressed in the current treatment studies in typically developing youth with depression.


2008 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 399-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petra H. J. M. Vlamings ◽  
Lisa M. Jonkman ◽  
Marco R. Hoeksma ◽  
Herman van Engeland ◽  
Chantal Kemner

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