Visual Search Performance in Children With ASD: A Combined Case-Control and Longitudinal Study

Area of Science:

• Neurodevelopmental disorders
• Cognitive neuroscience
• Developmental psychology

Background:

• Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is linked to differences in attention, often showing enhanced visual search.
• Previous research suggests a visual search advantage in individuals with ASD, but longitudinal data is limited.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the longitudinal development of visual search skills in preschoolers with ASD.
• To compare visual search performance between children with ASD and typically developing (TD) children over approximately three years.
• To investigate the relationship between visual search performance and ASD symptom severity.

Main Methods:

• Utilized eye-tracking to measure visual search accuracy and time to target in a single-feature visual search task.
• Recruited preschoolers with ASD (n=60) and age-matched TD children (n=50).
• Assessed participants at baseline and after a 3-year follow-up period, correlating performance with parent-reported ASD symptoms.

Main Results:

• At baseline, both ASD and TD groups exhibited similar visual search accuracy and time to target.
• By the 3-year follow-up, the ASD group demonstrated significantly lower visual search accuracy and shorter time to target compared to the TD group.
• Within the ASD cohort, enhanced visual search (higher accuracy, shorter time) correlated with increased social communication impairments.

Conclusions:

• The assumed ASD advantage in visual search may be less pronounced or context-dependent than previously thought.
• Visual search performance differences between ASD and TD groups emerge over time during early development.
• Faster and more accurate visual search in ASD may be associated with specific symptom profiles, highlighting heterogeneity within the spectrum.