Eye movement difficulties in Autism Spectrum Disorder: implications for implicit contextual learning

Kourkoulou, Anastasia, Kuhn, Gustav, Findlay, John M. and Leekam, Susan R. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1122-0135 2013. Eye movement difficulties in Autism Spectrum Disorder: implications for implicit contextual learning. Autism Research 6 (3) , pp. 177-189. 10.1002/aur.1274

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Abstract

It is widely accepted that we use contextual information to guide our gaze when searching for an object. People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) also utilise contextual information in this way; yet, their visual search in tasks of this kind is much slower compared with people without ASD. The aim of the current study was to explore the reason for this by measuring eye movements. Eye movement analyses revealed that the slowing of visual search was not caused by making a greater number of fixations. Instead, participants in the ASD group were slower to launch their first saccade, and the duration of their fixations was longer. These results indicate that slowed search in ASD in contextual learning tasks is not due to differences in the spatial allocation of attention but due to temporal delays in the initial-reflexive orienting of attention and subsequent-focused attention. These results have broader implications for understanding the unusual attention profile of individuals with ASD and how their attention may be shaped by learning.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Psychology
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology R Medicine > RC Internal medicine > RC0321 Neuroscience. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry
Uncontrolled Keywords:	autism; eye movements; visual search; implicit learning; contextual cueing
Publisher:	Wiley
ISSN:	1939-3792
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	30 March 2016
Last Modified:	07 May 2023 04:54
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/46264

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