Naturalistic Hybrid Search in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Co-recording EEG and eye-tracking data to investigate behaviour and brain activity differences

在现实生活中，当在人群中寻找朋友或开车时，人们通常会在记忆中寻找各种可能的目标之一。包括通过记忆搜索目标，并在视觉上搜索它们，这被称为混合搜索（HS）。在自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）中，一些证据表明，与正常个体相比，ASD患者的搜索方式可能有所不同，但其潜在机制尚不清楚。ASD是一种神经发育障碍，在英国发病率不断上升，其特征是社交困难、感觉运动异常、兴趣和行为受限。最近的一项理论试图调和关于ASD潜在认知机制的证据，提出ASD中的非典型过程可能源于内部假设（也称为“先验”）比典型个体较少使用，而不是异常感知。当感知一种体验时，个体受到传入的感官信息和他们对世界的先验知识的影响。在自闭症谱系障碍中，发展或使用这种先验知识来理解一种体验，例如，一个人正在寻找一个特定的朋友的场景，可能会受到影响。然而，到目前为止，混合搜索实验范式通常涉及在空白背景下搜索抽象刺激，这意味着它们没有捕捉到现实世界的设置，限制了这类建议的研究。自然场景具有上下文信息，个体使用上下文信息来引导他们在场景的特定区域搜索不同的目标。因此，如果我们想更好地理解自闭症患者搜索的认知过程，研究现实世界场景中存在的上下文信息就显得尤为重要。因此，该项目旨在研究行为和脑成像数据，以研究神经典型和神经多样性大脑如何使用更接近现实世界经验的刺激和范式来协调自然混合搜索的复杂步骤的潜在差异。为了研究混合搜索的机制，该项目将需要在参与者执行一项修改后的HS任务时，共同记录脑电图（EEG），记录大脑的电活动和眼球追踪数据，该任务操纵刺激类型和上下文特征。参与者将是有或没有自闭症的成年人，年龄、性别和非语言智商相匹配。联合记录脑电图和眼动追踪来了解神经典型和神经多样性脑的混合搜索机制是一项新的研究。它将弥补前面提到的一些知识差距。虽然ASD是一个很好的研究和对比混合搜索机制的人群，因为它们很可能是非典型的，这项实验工作也对理解ASD潜在的认知和神经机制有意义。实际上，这个项目可能会对现实世界产生影响，例如，帮助为许多关键的现实世界混合搜索任务（如驾驶）创建针对ASD的培训。

In real life, when searching for friends in crowds, or driving, individuals often look for one of various possible targets kept in memory. Involving searching targets through one's memory, and searching them visually, this is known as hybrid search (HS). In autism spectrum disorder (ASD), some evidence has shown that individuals with ASD may approach search differently compared to typical individuals, however the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. ASD is a neurodevelopmental disorder of rising incidence in the UK that is characterised by social difficulties, sensorimotor abnormalities, and restricted interests and behaviours. A recent theory attempting to reconcile the evidence about the latent cognitive mechanisms in ASD proposes that, rather than abnormal perception, atypical processes in ASD may stem from internal assumptions (also known as "priors") being less used than in typical individuals. When perceiving an experience, individuals are impacted by both inbound sensory information and their prior knowledge about the world. In ASD, the development or usage of this prior knowledge to understand an experience, for instance, a scene where one is searching for a specific friend, can be affected. However, hybrid search experimental paradigms so far have typically involved searching for an abstract stimulus in blank backgrounds, which means they do not capture real-world settings and limit the investigation of such proposal. Natural scenes have contextual information that individuals use to guide their search to specific areas of the scene for different targets. Therefore, research that accounts for contextual information present in real-world scenes is particularly important if we want to better understand the cognitive processes of search in ASD. Thus, this project aims to examine behavioural and brain-imaging data to investigate potential differences in how neurotypical and neurodiverse brains coordinate the complex steps of naturalistic hybrid search, using stimuli and paradigms that are closer to real-world experience. To examine the mechanisms underpinning hybrid search, this project will entail co-recording an electroencephalogram (EEG), a recording of the brain's electrical activity, and eye-tracking data while participants perform a modified HS task that manipulates stimuli type and contextual features. Participants will be adults with and without an autism spectrum condition, matched in age, gender, and non-verbal IQ. Co-recording EEG and eye-tracking to understand hybrid search's mechanisms in the neurotypical and neurodiverse brain is a novel investigation. It will bridge several knowledge gaps as aforementioned. While ASD is a sound population to investigate and contrast mechanisms underpinning hybrid search in general, because they are likely to be atypical, this experimental work also has implications for understanding underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms in ASD. Practically, this project could have real-world implications, such as, helping create ASD targeted training for many critical real-world hybrid search tasks, like driving.