Social Attention In Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders

Autism spectrum disorders(ASD)are defined as neurodevelopmental disorders which the core symptoms are social and communication deficits.A lot of studies indicate that atypical visual social attention and physiological responses occurred in their early childhood,which could be a side for early screening and evaluation of intervention effects.In order to explore indicators and characteristic of social attention in different conditions in ASD children,this study selected 16 children with ASD at the age of 3 to 7 and 16 children with typical development(TD)to view video materials freely,and collected eye movement and skin conductance data at the same time.The results showed that,(1)There is no group difference with respect to detection and processing patterns,they took shorter time to detect and longer time to process social information either in competitive condition or not.(2)Autism children showed shorter fixation time and longer significantly time to first fixation than TD children in competitive condition.(3)Children with autism showed higher skin conductance responses(SCR)to two types of information than TD children.(4)There is a significant positive correlation between the ratio of SCR and fixation time to social information.(5)The indicator of social prioritization score(SPS)could be used to early screening and evaluation of intervention effects.Above all,current study found that ASD children had typical model of social attention in detection and processing either in competitive condition or not,but they showed weaker strength to process social information in competitive condition.This result implied that social attention deficits in ASD may be due to the weak inhibitory ability to something interfering.ASD children had no habituation of SCR to social information,this may indicate that high physiological arousal hindered the development of social skills.