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An antisaccade task for measuring the attentional characteristics of social information processing in children with autism spectrum conditions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2021

M. Lizarán ,
R. Sahuquillo-Leal ,
M. Perea ,
A. Moreno-Giménez ,
L. Salmerón ,
S. Simó ,
M. Vento  and
A. García-Blanco
M. Lizarán*
Affiliation:
Neonatal Research Group, The Medical Research Institute Hospital La Fe (IIS La Fe), Valencia, Spain
R. Sahuquillo-Leal
Affiliation:
Neonatal Research Group, The Medical Research Institute Hospital La Fe (IIS La Fe), Valencia, Spain
M. Perea
Affiliation:
Department Of Psychology, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain
A. Moreno-Giménez
Affiliation:
Neonatal Research Group, The Medical Research Institute Hospital La Fe (IIS La Fe), Valencia, Spain
L. Salmerón
Affiliation:
Department Of Psychology, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain
S. Simó
Affiliation:
Department Of Psychology, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain
M. Vento
Affiliation:
Neonatal Research Group, The Medical Research Institute Hospital La Fe (IIS La Fe), Valencia, Spain
A. García-Blanco
Affiliation:
Neonatal Research Group, The Medical Research Institute Hospital La Fe (IIS La Fe), Valencia, Spain
*
*Corresponding author.

Abstract

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Introduction

Autistic Spectrum Condition is often characterized by the presence of deficits in social interaction. An abnormal attentional processing may explain these difficulties, as it has been suggested that individuals with autism spectrum conditions may have problems with orienting attention to socially relevant stimuli and/or inhibiting their attentional responses to irrelevant ones.

Objectives

The aim of the current study is to shed light on this issue by the assessment of the attentional orienting and inhibitory control to emotional stimuli (angry, happy, and neutral faces).

Methods

An antisaccade task (with both prosaccade and antisaccade blocks) was applied to a final sample of 29 children with autism spectrum conditions and 27 children with typical development.

Results

The main findings were: i) children with autism spectrum condition committed more antisaccade error when seeing angry faces than happy or neutral faces, while children with typical development committed more antisaccade errors when seeing happy faces than neutral faces, and ii) latencies in the prosaccade and antisaccade blocks were associated with the severity of autism symptoms.

Conclusions

These results suggest that children with autism spectrum conditions show an impaired inhibitory control when angry faces are presented. This bias to negative high-arousal information is congruent with affective information-processing theories suggesting that threatening stimuli induce an overwhelming response in autism. From a clinical perspective, therapeutic strategies that focus on shifting attention to emotional stimuli may improve autism symptomatology and their socials functioning.

Keywords

inhibitory controlautism spectrum conditionantisaccade taskeye-tracker
Type
Abstract
Information
European Psychiatry , Volume 64 , Special Issue S1: Abstracts of the 29th European Congress of Psychiatry , April 2021 , pp. S227
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Psychiatric Association
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