Attenuated selective attention during visual perspective taking in autism: A combined behavior, ERP, and pupillometry...

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Developmental Psychology
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Social cognition in autism may be linked to domain-general function deficits, like selective attention.
• Visual perspective taking (VPT) is crucial for social interaction.
• Investigating selective attention's role in VPT in autism is key to understanding social cognition.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine how manipulating selective attention demands affects visual perspective taking (VPT) in autistic and neurotypical youth.
• To identify neurophysiological mechanisms underlying differences in VPT and selective attention between groups.

Main Methods:

• 43 autistic and 38 neurotypical children/youth completed a VPT task with varying perspective congruency.
• Behavioral performance, event-related potentials (ERPs), and stimulus-evoked pupil response (SEPR) were measured.
• Group differences in response to perspective congruency and task demands were analyzed.

Main Results:

• Autistic participants exhibited lower accuracy in judging avatar perspectives and distinct late-frontal slow wave (LFSW) patterns.
• Incongruent perspectives amplified behavioral and LFSW differences in autistic individuals.
• Autistic participants showed larger, sustained SEPR, indicating altered cognitive effort, separate from LFSW findings.

Conclusions:

• Autistic youth demonstrate impaired VPT and difficulties with selective attention, contributing to social cognition challenges.
• Altered fronto-cortical activity (LFSW) suggests increased top-down processing in autistic VPT.
• Pupil responses highlight heightened cognitive effort in autistic individuals reporting visual perspectives, underscoring the interplay of social and domain-general factors in autism.