Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 16, 2026
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Comparing Eye-tracking Data of Children with High-functioning ASD, Comorbid ADHD, and of a Control Watching Social Videos
Published on: December 7, 2018
Social stimuli interfere with cognitive control in autism
Gabriel S Dichter1, Aysenil Belger
1Department of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, CB# 7160, 101 Manning Drive, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7160, USA.
Neuroimage
|February 27, 2007
Summary
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is linked to cognitive control deficits. Processing social cues, like gaze, impairs cognitive control brain regions in individuals with ASD, unlike neurotypical individuals.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
- Developmental Psychology
Background:
- Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by social interaction impairments and cognitive control deficits.
- The neural mechanisms underlying the interaction between social and cognitive control processing in ASD remain unclear.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how processing social-cognitive stimuli (gaze direction) affects brain regions involved in cognitive control in individuals with ASD.
- To compare brain activity during cognitive control tasks with and without social-cognitive demands between individuals with ASD and neurotypical controls.
Main Methods:
- Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure brain activity.
- Participants (high-functioning individuals with ASD and matched neurotypical controls) performed a flanker task using arrow and gaze stimuli.
- Stimuli were presented as congruent or incongruent to assess cognitive control and social-cognitive processing.
Main Results:
- Both groups showed similar activation in cognitive control regions (midfrontal gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus, intraparietal sulcus, anterior cingulate) for the incongruent arrow task.
- During the incongruent gaze task, neurotypical individuals recruited the same cognitive control regions.
- Individuals with ASD exhibited significant hypoactivation in these cognitive control regions when processing incongruent gaze stimuli compared to neurotypical individuals.
Conclusions:
- Processing social-cognitive stimuli, such as gaze, interferes with the functioning of brain regions critical for cognitive control in individuals with ASD.
- These findings highlight a potential neural mechanism for cognitive control deficits observed in autism spectrum disorder, particularly in social contexts.
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