Abstract
BackgroundChildren with Down syndrome (DS) are at increased likelihood of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) relative to the general population. To better understand the nature of this comorbidity, we examined the visuo-attentional processes associated with autistic trait expression in children with DS, focusing specifically on attentional disengagement and visual search performance. MethodWe collected eye-tracking data from children with DS (n = 15) and children with idiopathic ASD (iASD, n = 16) matched according to chronological age. Seven children with DS had a formal clinical diagnosis of ASD (DS+ASD). ResultsIn children with iASD, but not DS, higher autistic trait levels were associated with decreased temporal facilitation on a gap-overlap task, implying increased visuospatial orienting efficiency. In all cases, higher autistic trait levels were associated with improved visual search performance according to decreased target detection latency. On a visual search task, children with DS+ASD outperformed their peers with DS-ASD, mirroring the phenotypic advantage associated with iASD. We found no evidence of a relationship between attentional disengagement and visual search performance, providing preliminary evidence of a differentiation in terms of underlying visuo-attentional mechanism. ConclusionWe illustrate the value of progressing beyond insensitive behavioural measures of phenotypic description to examine, in a more fine-grained way, the attentional features associated with ASD comorbidity in children with DS.
Highlights
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a clinical umbrella term used to reference a profile of socio-communicative impairment and restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour (RRB; Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013)
We set out to investigate whether ASD in Down syndrome (DS) is characterised by the same visuo-attentional features that have been documented in cases of idiopathic ASD (iASD), relating to a broader question of whether these are similar clinical entities in accordance with current classification and diagnostic practices
In terms of the Saccadic reaction times (SRTs) data derived from the gap-overlap task, we found no evidence of increased attentional disengagement difficulty in children with iASD and DS + ASD relative to those with DS and no ASD (DS-ASD)
Summary
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a clinical umbrella term used to reference a profile of socio-communicative impairment and restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour (RRB; Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Keehn et al (2013) suggest that early disengagement difficulties may prompt a compensatory attentional narrowing as the system endeavours to self-regulate arousal by reducing the amount of incoming information They propose that this compensatory narrowing may account for the visual search advantage often observed in children with iASD as an increased signal-to-noise ratio may generate an enhanced capacity to process stimulus features at the locus of attention (for reviews, see Dakin & Frith, 2005; Simmons et al, 2009). In all cases and in keeping with the notion of a common underlying mechanism, we anticipated a relationship between indices of attentional disengagement and visual search performance
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