Abstract
A number of authors have suggested that attention control may be a suitable target for cognitive training in children with autism spectrum disorder. This study provided the first evidence of the feasibility of such training using a battery of tasks intended to target visual attentional control in children with autism spectrum disorder within school-based settings. Twenty-seven children were recruited and randomly assigned to either training or an active control group. Of these, 19 completed the initial assessment, and 17 (9 trained and 8 control) completed all subsequent training sessions. Training of 120 min was administered per participant, spread over six sessions (on average). Compliance with the training tasks was generally high, and evidence of within-task training improvements was found. A number of untrained tasks to assess transfer of training effects were administered pre- and post-training. Changes in the trained group were assessed relative to an active control group. Following training, significant and selective changes in visual sustained attention were observed. Trend training effects were also noted on disengaging visual attention, but no convincing evidence of transfer was found to non-trained assessments of saccadic reaction time and anticipatory looking. Directions for future development and refinement of these new training techniques are discussed.
Highlights
Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are neurodevelopmental disorders characterised by impairments in social interaction and communication, and the presence of restrictive, repetitive patterns of behaviour (APA, 2013)
We addressed three questions: (1) Are school-based training environments suitable for hosting this kind of repeat-visit training study? (2) Can sufficiently good quality data be collected in these settings, and with these populations? (3) Are training tasks sufficiently difficult and engaging to maintain interest over multiple sessions in children?
In order to evaluate the quality of raw eyetracking data obtained on this trial, which used eyetrackers within school settings, a comparison was conducted between data obtained in this study and data from a previous study of typical 12-month-old infants conducted in laboratory settings, using a Tobii 1750 eyetracker (Wass et al, 2011)
Summary
Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are neurodevelopmental disorders characterised by impairments in social interaction and communication, and the presence of restrictive, repetitive patterns of behaviour (APA, 2013). The training interfaces used in this study are based on those developed for typical infants and toddlers by Wass et al (2011) In this previous study, a battery of gaze-contingent training tasks targeting the cognitive domains of interference resolution, inhibition, task-switching and working memory was administered to typically developing 11-month-old infants across four visits. After training, improvements in attentional disengagement, saccadic reaction time (RT), cognitive control and visual sustained attention were observed (Wass et al, 2011), as well as marginally non-significant changes in looking behaviour during free play. Significant transfer of training improvements was again observed on most but not all tasks In this pilot study, we wished to evaluate the feasibility of applying gaze-contingent attentional control training paradigms, which previously had been used in both laboratory and community settings with infants, to children with ASD. We predicted (based on Wass et al, 2011) that the trained group would show (1) a selective increase in looking time in the sustained attention task, (2) reduced attentional disengagement latencies, (3) faster saccadic RTs and (4) faster anticipatory saccades
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