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Updated: May 29, 2026

Comparing Eye-tracking Data of Children with High-functioning ASD, Comorbid ADHD, and of a Control Watching Social Videos
Published on: December 7, 2018
Individual differences in visual search: relationship to autistic traits, discrimination thresholds, and speed of
Jon Brock1, Jing Y Xu, Kevin R Brooks
1ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders (Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia. jon.brock@mq.edu.au
Abstract:
Enhanced visual search is widely reported in autism. Here we note a similar advantage for university students self-reporting higher levels of autism-like traits. Contrary to prevailing theories of autism, performance was not associated with perceptual-discrimination thresholds for the same stimuli, but was associated with inspection-time threshold--a measure of speed of perceptual processing. Enhanced visual search in autism may, therefore, at least partially be explained by faster speed of processing.
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Autism Spectrum Disorder
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