Social Attention in Normal and Autistic Individuals

正常人和自闭症患者的社会关注

• 批准号: 7156767
• 负责人: JOSHUA J NEW
• 金额: $ 4.4万
• 依托单位: YALE UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-07-13 至 2009-07-12
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7156767
• 关键词: attention; autism; behavior test; behavioral /social science research tag; clinical research; developmental neurobiology; emotions; eye movements; human subject; longitudinal human study; neural information processing; patient oriented research; postdoctoral investigator; social behavior; stimulus /response; time resolved data; visual perception; visual stimulus; attention; autism; behavior test; behavioral /social science research tag; clinical research; developmental neurobiology; emotions; eye movements; human subject; longitudinal human study; neural information processing; patient oriented research; postdoctoral investigator; social behavior; stimulus /response; time resolved data; visual perception; visual stimulus

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Socially relevant visual information has been implicated as an object of specific and automatic attentional biases in normal visual cognition; conversely, inattentiveness to social agents and information comprises one of the central impairments in autism. The overarching aim of this research is to determine the scope of such prioritized social attention, in two ways: Beyond specific features such as faces and eye-gaze (as studied in previous research), does such prioritization (1) encompass more subtle features such as emotional expression, and (2) prioritize the processing of animate individuals - people and animals - as a general category? These questions will be studied in normally developing adults, children with autism spectrum disorder, and matched developmental controls using a series of 'change detection' tasks that are able to assess spontaneous prioritization of social information, without the explicit guidance to such information which is present in most previous studies. Participants must "spot the difference" between two alternating versions of a scene, and their response times serve as a measure of the spontaneous allocation of attention (1) to various types of stimuli involving changes to people, animals, and artifacts; and (2) to aspects effaces including identity, eye gaze direction, head direction, and emotional expression. Such results will help to determine the nature and extent of the impairment of social attention in individuals with autism spectrum disorder, and also the scope of 'social prioritization' in intact visual cognition.

描述（由申请人提供）：与社会相关的视觉信息已被牵涉到正常视觉认知中特定和自动注意偏见的对象；相反，对社会代理人和信息的关注不集中，这是自闭症的中心障碍之一。这项研究的总体目的是通过两种方式确定这种优先社会关注的范围：除了面对面和眼睛凝视之类的特定特征（如先前的研究中所研究）之外，此类优先级（1）是否包括情感表达的更微妙的特征，例如（2）优先级的动画个人 - 人和动物的处理 - 一般类别？这些问题将在正常发展的成年人，自闭症谱系障碍的儿童中进行研究，并使用一系列“变更检测”任务匹配发展控制，这些任务能够评估社交信息的自发优先级，而没有对大多数先前研究中存在此类信息的明确指导。参与者必须“发现”场景的两个交替版本之间的差异，他们的响应时间可以自发分配注意力（1）对各种类型的刺激，涉及对人，动物和人工制品的变化； （2）在包括身份，眼睛凝视方向，头部方向和情感表达的方面。这样的结果将有助于确定自闭症谱系障碍个体社会关注障碍的性质和程度，以及完整视觉认知中“社会优先级”的范围。