A Preliminary Investigation of Attentional Strategy Use and Control in Autistic Adults
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Date
2024-05
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
Background: Autism spectrum disorder (henceforth “autism”) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by social communication differences and restrictive/repetitive behaviors. Research suggests that autistic individuals often outperform neurotypical individuals on visual search tasks. This pilot study investigated attentional strategy use during a visual search task among autistic and neurotypical adults. Research questions included 1) Does visual search performance differ between autistic and neurotypical adults?; 2) Do groups differ on strategy use and is performance related to strategy?; and 3) Is there a relationship between sensory processing and attentional control?
Methods: A total of 11 adults (7 neurotypical and 4 autistic) completed the Adaptive Choice Visual Search (ACVS; Irons & Leber, 2018) paradigm. Participants completed a self-appraisal of the ACVS task to note strategy use, the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile, and the Social Responsiveness Scale 2.
Results: On the ACVS task, neurotypical participants showed faster reaction time than autistic participants, though both groups had similar accuracy rates. Neurotypical participants were more likely to employ the optimal strategy compared to autistic participants. In the self-appraisal, autistic participants did not display a clear trend within strategy usage, while a majority of neurotypical participants indicated specific strategy use (searching for the least populous color). On the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile, autistic participants showed higher sensory sensitivity, lower registration, and sensation-avoiding scores than neurotypical peers. On the Social Responsiveness Scale 2, autistic participants scored on average in the moderate autism symptomatology range, while neurotypical participants scored on average in the neurotypical range.
Conclusion: Given the small sample size, our results highlight the need for further research including larger sample sizes examining attentional strategy use in autistic adults. Current results of longer response times with high accuracy rates in autistic adults do not replicate the “autism advantage” documented in existing research. Characterizing attentional strategy control in autistic adults will provide valuable insights into developing therapeutic supports that are tailored to their attention profile.
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Keywords
Autism, Visual search, Visual attention, ACVS, Sensory profile