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Abstract:
Abstract: In these studies we assessed whether social stimuli
automatically cue visuospatial attention in typically developing
children and children with autism. The aim was investigate whether
children with autism are impaired in orienting attention in the
direction of seen gaze. Adaptations of Posner's spatial cueing task
were used, replacing arrows with face cues looking to the left or
right of the computer screen. A centrally located face cue appeared
for either 100ms or 800ms, validly or invalidly indicating the
location of a forthcoming target. The face cue was valid 50% of the
time. Participants were instructed to fixate on the centre of the
screen and to press a space bar as soon as a target appeared. They
were also instructed to ignore the face cue, as it would point
toward the wrong location half the time. Typically developing
children were faster to detect validly cued targets than invalidly
cued targets, demonstrating that the face automatically cued
visuospatial attention in this group. A moving face (turning to the
left or right) also automatically cued attention in this group,
whilst inverted faces produced no cueing effect. In contrast,
neither static, moving nor inverted faces produced automatic cueing
of visuospatial attention in the group of children with autism.
Social cues such as faces therefore automatically cue attention in
typically developing children but not in children with
autism.
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