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Do people with autistic spectrum disorder show normal selection for attention? Evidence from change blindness
Author(s) -
FletcherWatson S.,
Leekam S. R.,
Turner M. A.,
Moxon L.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
british journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.536
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8295
pISSN - 0007-1269
DOI - 10.1348/000712606x114057
Subject(s) - psychology , autism , cognitive psychology , context (archaeology) , selection (genetic algorithm) , autistic spectrum , population , task (project management) , change blindness , autistic traits , blindness , object (grammar) , developmental psychology , cognition , autism spectrum disorder , neuroscience , linguistics , artificial intelligence , medicine , paleontology , philosophy , demography , management , sociology , computer science , optometry , economics , biology
People in the general population are typically very poor at detecting changes in pictures of complex scenes. The degree of this ‘change blindness’, however, varies with the content of the scene: when an object is semantically important or contextually inappropriate, people may be more effective at detecting changes. Two experiments investigated change blindness in people with autism, who are known from previous research to be efficient in detecting features yet poor at processing stimuli for meaning and context. The first experiment measured the effect of semantic information while the second investigated the role of context in directing attention. In each task, participants detected the dissimilarity between pairs of images. Both groups showed a main effect of image type in both experimental tasks, showing that their attention was directed to semantically meaningful and contextually inappropriate items. However, the autistic group also showed a greater difficulty detecting changes to semantically marginal items in the first experiment. Conclusions point to a normal selection of items for attention in people with autism spectrum disorders, although this may be combined with difficulty switching or disengaging attention.