Perceptual Factors Affecting Social Attention in Autism Spectrum Disorders

描述（由申请人提供）：患有ASD的非常年幼的儿童的一个显著和典型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。虽然自闭症幼儿对物体明显的高度兴趣的现象还没有得到很好的理解，但早在一岁生日时就有记录。这些早期自闭症儿童注意力的差异可能是发展级联的一部分，导致他们以关注人为代价更强烈地关注物体。这种重物轻人的倾向会影响社会学习的机会，也可能导致语言和解决问题技能的习得困难。事实上，自闭症儿童行为治疗的一个基本目标是将他们的注意力从物体转移到父母、老师和同伴身上。目前的建议的主要目标是阐明感知过程，有助于偏见自闭症儿童对物体和驱动他们不寻常的探索行为。我们将重点关注两个知觉维度，在我们以前的工作中，我们发现这两个维度在驱动ASD幼儿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颖的双管齐下的方法，将眼动追踪任务与类似的行为任务相结合，以研究在眼动追踪实验的背景下所表现出的视觉偏好与自由玩耍情况下可观察到的注意力偏差（偏好）之间的关联。本研究将探讨以下问题：（1）自闭症幼儿是否偏向于高对比度刺激？(2)某些类型的运动，如旋转运动，对ASD幼儿来说特别突出吗？(3)感知上显著的干扰物的存在是否会阻碍ASD幼儿对社会刺激的注意力？我们计划对18-24个月大的幼儿进行这些实验，这些幼儿表现出ASD的迹象。从临床角度来看，瞄准这一群体是至关重要的，因为视觉注意力异常（例如，不寻常的视觉兴趣）构成了ASD诊断标准的一部分，然而这些困难通常仅以有限的形式在这个年龄显现。因此，设计更敏感的行为方法来检测这一领域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，吸引幼儿的视觉注意力，并有效地吸引他们远离社会经验，这是他们的发展至关重要。公共卫生相关性：拟议的实验集中在ASD早期阶段的视觉感知异常，甚至可能在这一领域的行为症状表现之前，从而推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ASD幼儿在日常情况下注意社会刺激的机制，该项目的研究结果将为旨在最大限度地减少这种缺陷在生命最初几年的级联效应的干预措施提供信息。此外，我们的研究结果可能是非常重要的设计早期诊断措施的高风险婴儿兄弟姐妹人群或婴儿与新兴的，但不清楚的症状ASD。

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.