Perceptual Factors Affecting Social Attention in Autism Spectrum Disorders

描述(由申请人提供)：患有自闭症的幼儿的一个显著特征是，他们对周围环境中的人的兴趣降低：他们经常更多地关注房间里的玩具和物体，而不是靠近的成年人。虽然患有自闭症的蹒跚学步的孩子对物体的兴趣明显增强的现象还没有被很好地理解，但早在一岁生日时就有了记录。患有自闭症的蹒跚学步儿童早期注意力上的这些差异可能是发育级联的一部分，这种发展级联导致人们更专注于物体，而不是照顾人。这种对物体的偏爱可能会干扰社交学习的机会，也可能会导致语言学习和解决问题技能的困难。事实上，自闭症儿童行为疗法的一个基本目标是将他们的注意力从物体转移到父母、老师和同龄人身上。目前这项提议的主要目标是阐明感知过程，这些过程有助于使患有自闭症的幼儿偏向物体，并驱动他们不寻常的探索性行为。我们将专注于两个感知维度，在我们之前的工作中，我们发现这两个维度在推动患有自闭症儿童的注意力方面特别重要：对比度和运动。我们正在采取一种新的双管齐下的方法，将眼球跟踪任务与类似的行为任务相结合，以考察在眼球跟踪实验背景下表现出的视觉偏好与在自由游戏情景中可观察到的注意偏差(偏好)之间的联系。这项拟议的研究将解决以下问题：(1)患有自闭症的幼儿是否偏向高对比度刺激？(2)某些类型的运动，如旋转运动，对患有自闭症的幼儿来说是否特别明显？(3)自闭症幼儿是否会因为感知上的显著干扰而阻碍对社交刺激的注意？我们计划对18-24个月大的表现出ASD迹象的蹒跚学步的孩子进行这些实验。从临床的角度来看，针对这一群体是至关重要的，因为视觉注意异常(例如，异常的视觉兴趣)是ASD诊断标准的一部分，然而这些困难在这个年龄段通常只以有限的形式表现出来。因此，设计更灵敏的行为方法来检测这一领域的新出现的异常是至关重要的。通过这些实验，我们将阐明刺激的感知成分，这些刺激吸引幼儿的视觉注意，并有效地将他们从对其发展至关重要的社会经验中吸引出来。与公共卫生相关：拟议的实验侧重于ASD早期阶段的视觉-知觉异常，甚至可能在这一领域的行为症状显现之前，从而促进我们对该疾病行为症状背后的过程和机制的理解。通过揭示导致自闭症儿童在日常生活中对社会刺激的注意力不足的机制，该项目的发现将为旨在将此类缺陷在生命最初几年的连锁影响降至最低的干预措施提供信息。此外，我们的发现对于设计高危婴儿同胞群体或出现ASD症状但不清楚的婴儿的早期诊断措施具有重要意义。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): A striking and characteristic feature of very young children with ASD is their reduced interest in people in their immediate environment: they frequently focus more on the toys and objects in the room and less on adults who are in close proximity. While the phenomenon of apparent heightened interest in objects in toddlers with ASD is not well understood, it has been documented as early as the first birthday. These early differences in attention in toddlers with ASD may be part of a developmental cascade that leads to a more intense focus on objects at the expense of attending to people. Such a preference for objects over people can interfere with opportunities for social learning and may also contribute to difficulties in the acquisition of language and problem solving skills. Indeed, a fundamental goal of behavioral therapy for children with ASD is to shift their attention away from objects and towards parents, teachers, and peers. The main goal of the current proposal is to elucidate the perceptual processes that serve to bias toddlers with ASD toward objects and drive their unusual exploratory behaviors. We will focus on two perceptual dimensions that in our previous work have been found particularly important in driving attention of toddlers with ASD: contrast and motion. We are taking a novel two-pronged approach, incorporating eye-tracking tasks with analogous behavioral tasks to examine the associations between visual preferences as exhibited in a context of eye-tracking experiments and attentional biases (preferences) observable during free play situations. The proposed study will address the following questions: (1) Are toddlers with ASD biased toward high-contrast stimuli? (2) Are certain kinds of motion such as rotational movement especially salient to toddlers with ASD? (3) Does the presence of perceptually salient distractors impede attention to social stimuli in toddlers with ASD? We plan to conduct these experiments with 18-24-month-old toddlers who are exhibiting signs of ASD. Targeting this group is critical from a clinical standpoint, as abnormalities in visual attention (e.g., unusual visual interests) constitute part of the diagnostic criteria for ASD, yet these difficulties often manifest at this age only in a limited form. Thus, designing more sensitive behavioral approaches to detect emerging abnormalities in this domain is vital. Through these experiments, we will elucidate the perceptual components of stimuli that attract toddlers' visual attention and effectively draw them away from social experiences that are critical to their development. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The proposed experiments focus on visuo-perceptual abnormalities in the early stages of ASD, perhaps even prior to the manifestation of behavioral symptoms in this area, and thus advance our understanding of the processes and mechanisms underlying behavioral symptoms of the disorder. By shedding light on the mechanisms that lead to deficits in attention to social stimuli in everyday situations in young children with ASD, the project's findings will inform interventions that aim to minimize the cascading effects of such deficits over the first years of life. Furthermore, our findings could be highly consequential for the design of early diagnostic measures for high-risk infant sibling populations or infants with emerging but unclear symptoms of ASD.