Skip to main content
Key Specialties
Cardiology Diabetology Endocrinology Gastroenterology Geriatrics and Gerontology Gynecology and Obstetrics Hematology Infectious Disease Internal Medicine Nephrology Neurology Oncology Pediatrics Respiratory Medicine Rheumatology Surgery
Congress Coverage
2024 ACC Congress 2023 ESMO Congress 2023 EASD Congress 2023 ERS Congress 2023 ESC Congress 2023 EHA Congress 2023 ASCO Annual Meeting
Clinical Collections
Advances in Alzheimer’s

At a glance: The ONWARDS insulin icodec trials

A round-up of the ONWARDS phase 3 clinical trials evaluating the novel weekly insulin icodec in people with diabetes.
ADVANCED SEARCH
Log in
Top
Molecular Autism
Published in: Molecular Autism 1/2017

Open Access 01-12-2017 | Research

A few of my favorite things: circumscribed interests in autism are not accompanied by increased attentional salience on a personalized selective attention task

Authors: Owen E. Parsons, Andrew P. Bayliss, Anna Remington

Published in: Molecular Autism | Issue 1/2017

Login to get access

Abstract

Background

Autistic individuals commonly show circumscribed or “special” interests: areas of obsessive interest in a specific category. The present study investigated what impact these interests have on attention, an aspect of autistic cognition often reported as altered. In neurotypical individuals, interest and expertise have been shown to result in an automatic attentional priority for related items. Here, we examine whether this change in salience is also seen in autism.

Methods

Adolescents and young adults with and without autism performed a personalized selective attention task assessing the level of attentional priority afforded to images related to the participant’s specific interests. In addition, participants performed a similar task with generic images in order to isolate any effects of interest and expertise. Crucially, all autistic and non-autistic individuals recruited for this study held a strong passion or interest. As such, any differences in attention could not be solely attributed to differing prevalence of interests in the two groups. In both tasks, participants were asked to perform a central target-detection task while ignoring irrelevant distractors (related or unrelated to their interests). The level of distractor interference under various task conditions was taken as an indication of attentional priority.

Results

Neurotypical individuals showed the predicted attentional priority for the circumscribed interest images but not generic items, reflecting the impact of their interest and expertise. Contrary to predictions, autistic individuals did not show this priority: processing the interest-related stimuli only when task demands were low. Attention to images unrelated to circumscribed interests was equivalent in the two groups.

Conclusions

These results suggest that despite autistic individuals holding an intense interest in a particular class of stimuli, there may be a reduced impact of this prior experience and expertise on attentional processing. The implications of this absence of automatic priority are discussed in terms of the behaviors associated with the condition.
Appendix
Available only for authorised users
Literature
1.
Baird G, Simonoff E, Pickles A, Chandler S, Loucas T, Meldrum D, et al. Prevalence of disorders of the autism spectrum in a population cohort of children in South Thames: the Special Needs and Autism Project (SNAP). Lancet. 2006;368:210–5.CrossRefPubMed
2.
Brugha TS, McManus S, Bankart J, Scott F, Purdon S, Smith J, et al. Epidemiology of autism spectrum disorders in adults in the community in England. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2011;68:459–65.CrossRefPubMed
3.
American Psychiatric A. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders: DSM-5. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association; 2013.CrossRef
4.
Lidstone J, Uljarevic M, Sullivan J, Leekam S. Relations among restricted and repetitive behaviors, anxiety and sensory features in children with autism spectrum disorders. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders. 2014;8:82–92.CrossRef
5.
Baron-Cohen S, Ashwin E, Ashwin C, Tavassoli T, Chakrabarti B. Talent in autism: hyper-systemizing, hyper-attention to detail and sensory hypersensitivity. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2009;364:1377–83.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
6.
7.
Happe F, Frith U. Autism and talent. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press; 2010.
8.
Turner-Brown LM, Lam KS, Holtzclaw TN, Dichter GS, Bodfish JW. Phenomenology and measurement of circumscribed interests in autism spectrum disorders. Autism. 2011;15:437–56.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
9.
Baron-Cohen S, Wheelwright S. ‘Obsessions’ in children with autism or Asperger syndrome. Content analysis in terms of core domains of cognition. Br J Psychiatry. 1999;175:484–90.CrossRefPubMed
10.
South M, Ozonoff S, McMahon WM. Repetitive behavior profiles in Asperger syndrome and high-functioning autism. J Autism Dev Disord. 2005;35:145–58.CrossRefPubMed
11.
Klin A, Danovitch JH, Merz AB, Volkmar F. Circumscribed interests in higher functioning individuals with autism spectrum disorders: an exploratory study. Research and Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities. 2007;32:89–100.CrossRef
12.
Charlop-Christy MH, Haymes LK. Using objects of obsession as token reinforcers for children with autism. J Autism Dev Disord. 1998;28:189–98.CrossRefPubMed
13.
Keeling K, Smith Myles B, Gagnon E, Simpson RL. Using the power card strategy to teach sportsmanship skills to a child with autism. Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities. 2001;18:105–11.CrossRef
14.
Boyd BA, Conroy MA, Mancil GR, Nakao T, Alter PJ. Effects of circumscribed interests on the social behaviors of children with autism spectrum disorders. J Autism Dev Disord. 2007;37:1550–61.CrossRefPubMed
15.
Baker MJ, Koegel R, Kern Koegel L. Teaching children with autism spectrum disorder with restricted interests: a review of evidence for best practice. Rev Educ Res. 1998;86:408–30.
16.
Sze K, Wood JJ. Cognitive behavioral treatment of comorbid anxiety disorders and social difficulties in children with high-functioning autism: a case report. J Contemp Psychother. 2007;37:133–43.CrossRef
17.
Wood JJ, Drahota A, Sze K, Har K, Chiu A, Langer DA. Cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety in children with autism spectrum disorders: a randomized, controlled trial. J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2009;50:224–34.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
18.
Attwood T. Asperger’s syndrome: a guide for parents and professionals, 1st ed. London: Jessica-Kingsley Publishers Ltd.; 1998.
19.
Attwood A. Understanding and managing circumscribed interests. In: Prior M, editor. Learning and behavior problems in Asperger syndrome. New York: Guilford Press; 2003. p. 126–47.
20.
Mercier C, Mottron L, Belleville S. A psychosocial study on restricted interests in high-functioning persons with pervasive developmental disorders. Autism. 2000;4:406–25.CrossRef
21.
Gazzaley A, Nobre AC. Top-down modulation: bridging selective attention and working memory. Trends Cogn Sci. 2012;16:129–35.CrossRefPubMed
22.
Wolfe JM, Butcher SJ, Lee C, Hyle M. Changing your mind: on the contributions of top-down and bottom-up guidance in visual search for feature singletons. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 2003;29:483–502.CrossRefPubMed
23.
Connor CE, Egeth HE, Yantis S. Visual attention: bottom-up versus top-down. Curr Biol. 2004;14:R850–2.CrossRefPubMed
24.
Corbetta M, Shulman GL. Control of goal-directed and stimulus-driven attention in the brain. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2002;3:201–15.CrossRefPubMed
25.
Johnson MH, Dziurawiec S, Ellis H, Morton J. Newborns’ preferential tracking of face-like stimuli and its subsequent decline. Cognition. 1991;40:1–19.CrossRefPubMed
26.
Kanwisher N, McDermott J, Chun MM. The fusiform face area: a module in human extrastriate cortex specialized for face perception. J Neurosci. 1997;17:4302–11.PubMed
27.
28.
McCarthy G, Puce A, Gore JC, Allison T. Face-specific processing in the human fusiform gyrus. J Cogn Neurosci. 1997;9:605–10.CrossRefPubMed
29.
Alonso Prieto E, Caharel S, Henson RN, Rossion B. Early (N170/M170) face-sensitivity despite right lateral occipital brain damage in acquired prosopagnosia. Front Hum Neurosci. 2011;5:2011.
30.
Grelotti DJ, Gauthier I, Schultz RT. Social interest and the development of cortical face specialization: what autism teaches us about face processing. Dev Psychobiol. 2002;40:213–25.CrossRefPubMed
31.
Gauthier I, Tarr MJ, Anderson AW, Skudlarski P, Gore JC. Activation of the middle fusiform ‘face area’ increases with expertise in recognizing novel objects. Nat Neurosci. 1999;2:568–73.CrossRefPubMed
32.
Gauthier I, Skudlarski P, Gore JC, Anderson AW. Expertise for cars and birds recruits brain areas involved in face recognition. Nat Neurosci. 2000;3:191–7.CrossRefPubMed
33.
Schultz RT. Developmental deficits in social perception in autism: the role of the amygdala and fusiform face area. Int J Dev Neurosci. 2005;23:125–41.CrossRefPubMed
34.
Weigelt S, Koldewyn K, Kanwisher N. Face identity recognition in autism spectrum disorders: a review of behavioral studies. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2012;36:1060–84.CrossRefPubMed
35.
Pierce K, Muller RA, Ambrose J, Allen G, Courchesne E. Face processing occurs outside the fusiform ‘face area’ in autism: evidence from functional MRI. Brain. 2001;124:2059–73.CrossRefPubMed
36.
Remington A, Campbell R, Swettenham J. Attentional status of faces for people with autism spectrum disorder. Autism. 2012;16:59–73.CrossRefPubMed
37.
Grelotti DJ, Klin AJ, Gauthier I, Skudlarski P, Cohen DJ, Gore JC, et al. fMRI activation of the fusiform gyrus and amygdala to cartoon characters but not to faces in a boy with autism. Neuropsychologia. 2005;43:373–85.CrossRefPubMed
38.
Foss-Feig JH, McGugin RW, Gauthier I, Mash LE, Ventola P, Cascio CJ. A functional neuroimaging study of fusiform response to restricted interests in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder. J Neurodev Disord. 2016;8:15.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
39.
Lavie N. Perceptual load as a necessary condition for selective attention. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 1995;21:451–68.CrossRefPubMed
40.
Lavie N. Distracted and confused?: selective attention under load. Trends Cogn Sci. 2005;9:75–82.CrossRefPubMed
41.
Rees G, Frith CD, Lavie N. Modulating irrelevant motion perception by varying attentional load in an unrelated task. Science. 1997;278:1616–9.CrossRefPubMed
42.
Maylor EA, Lavie N. The influence of perceptual load on age differences in selective attention. Psychol Aging. 1998;13:563–73.CrossRefPubMed
43.
Rees G, Russell C, Frith CD, Driver J. Inattentional blindness versus inattentional amnesia for fixated but ignored words. Science. 1999;286:2504–7.CrossRefPubMed
44.
Lavie N, Ro T, Russell C. The role of perceptual load in processing distractor faces. Psychol Sci. 2003;14:510–5.CrossRefPubMed
45.
Farah MJ, Wilson KD, Drain HM, Tanaka JR. The inverted face inversion effect in prosopagnosia: evidence for mandatory, face-specific perceptual mechanisms. Vision Res. 1995;35:2089–93.CrossRefPubMed
46.
Ro T, Friggel A, Lavie N. Musical expertise modulates the effects of visual perceptual load. Atten Percept Psychophys. 2009;71:671–4.CrossRefPubMed
47.
Sasson NJ, Elison JT, Turner-Brown LM, Dichter GS, Bodfish JW. Brief report: circumscribed attention in young children with autism. J Autism Dev Disord. 2011;41:242–7.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
48.
Sasson NJ, Dichter GS, Bodfish JW. Affective responses by adults with autism are reduced to social images but elevated to images related to circumscribed interests. PLoS ONE. 2012;7, e42457.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
49.
Sasson NJ, Touchstone EW. Visual attention to competing social and object images by preschool children with autism spectrum disorder. J Autism Dev Disord. 2014;44:584–92.CrossRefPubMed
50.
Mathôt S, Schreij D, Theeuwes J. OpenSesame: an opensource, graphical experiment builder for the social sciences. Behav Res Methods. 2012;44:314–24.CrossRefPubMed
51.
Remington A, Swettenham J, Lavie N. Lightening the load: perceptual load impairs visual detection in typical adults but not in autism. J Abnorm Psychol. 2012;121:544–51.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
52.
Wechsler D. Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence—Second Edition (WASI-II). San Antonio, TX: NCS Pearson; 2011.
53.
A. American Psychiatric. DSM-IV Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 4th ed. Washington: American Psychiatric Association; 1994.
54.
Lord C, Rutter M, DiLavore PC, Risi S. Autism diagnostic observational schedule. Los Angeles, CA: Western Psychological Services; 2002.
55.
Constantino JN, Gruber CP. The social responsiveness scale. Los Angeles, USA: Western Psychological Services; 2002.
56.
Mandy W, Chilvers R, Chowdhury U, Salter G, Seigal A, Skuse D. Sex differences in autism spectrum disorder: evidence from a large sample of children and adolescents. J Autism Dev Disord. 2012;42:1304–13.CrossRefPubMed
57.
Frazier TW, Hardan AY, “Equivalence of symptom dimensions in females and males with autism,” Autism, Aug 7 2016. Epub ahead of print.
58.
Hiller RM, Young RL, Weber N. Sex differences in pre-diagnosis concerns for children later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Autism. 2016;20:75–84.CrossRefPubMed
59.
Schultz RT, Gauthier I, Klin A, Fulbright RK, Anderson AW, Volkmar F, et al. Abnormal ventral temporal cortical activity during face discrimination among individuals with autism and Asperger syndrome. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2000;57:331–40.CrossRefPubMed
60.
Critchley HD, Daly EM, Bullmore ET, Williams SC, Van AT, Robertson DM, et al. The functional neuroanatomy of social behaviour: changes in cerebral blood flow when people with autistic disorder process facial expressions. Brain. 2000;123(11):2203–12.CrossRefPubMed
61.
Mottron L, Dawson M, Soulieres I, Hubert B, Burack J. Enhanced perceptual functioning in autism: an update, and eight principles of autistic perception. J Autism Dev Disord. 2006;36:27–43.CrossRefPubMed
62.
Bolte S, Hubl D, Dierks T, Holtmann M, Poustka F. An fMRI-study of locally oriented perception in autism: altered early visual processing of the block design test. J Neural Transm. 2008;115:545–52.CrossRefPubMed
63.
Maekawa T, Tobimatsu S, Inada N, Oribe N, Onitsuka T, Kanba S, et al. Top-down and bottom-up visual information processing of non-social stimuli in high-functioning autism spectrum disorder. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders. 2011;5:201–9.CrossRef
64.
Neumann D, Spezio ML, Piven J, Adolphs R. Looking you in the mouth: abnormal gaze in autism resulting from impaired top-down modulation of visual attention. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2006;1:194–202.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
65.
Happe FG. Studying weak central coherence at low levels: children with autism do not succumb to visual illusions. A research note. J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 1996;37:873–7.CrossRefPubMed
66.
Mitchell P, Ropar D. Visuo-spatial abilities in autism: a review. 2004.
67.
Soulieres I, Mottron L, Saumier D, Larochelle S. Atypical categorical perception in autism: autonomy of discrimination? J Autism Dev Disord. 2007;37:481–90.CrossRefPubMed
68.
Pellicano E, Burr D. When the world becomes ‘too real’: a Bayesian explanation of autistic perception. Trends Cogn Sci. 2012;16:504–10.CrossRefPubMed
69.
70.
Summerfield C, Trittschuh EH, Monti JM, Mesulam MM, Egner T. Neural repetition suppression reflects fulfilled perceptual expectations. Nat Neurosci. 2008;11:1004–6.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
71.
Pellicano E, Jeffery L, Burr D, Rhodes G. Abnormal adaptive face-coding mechanisms in children with autism spectrum disorder. Curr Biol. 2007;17:1508–12.CrossRefPubMed
72.
Pellicano E, Rhodes G, Calder AJ. Reduced gaze aftereffects are related to difficulties categorising gaze direction in children with autism. Neuropsychologia. 2013;51:1504–9.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
73.
Ewbank MP, Rhodes G, von dem Hagen EA, Powell TE, Bright N, Stoyanova RS, et al. Repetition suppression in ventral visual cortex is diminished as a function of increasing autistic traits. Cereb Cortex. 2015;25:3381–93.CrossRefPubMed
74.
Grill-Spector K, Henson R, Martin A. Repetition and the brain: neural models of stimulus-specific effects. Trends Cogn Sci. 2006;10:14–23.CrossRefPubMed
75.
Benning SD, Kovac M, Campbell A, Miller S, Hanna EK, Damiano CR, et al. Late positive potential ERP responses to social and nonsocial stimuli in youth with autism spectrum disorder. J Autism Dev Disord. 2016;46:3068–77.CrossRefPubMed
76.
Sabatino A, Rittenberg A, Sasson NJ, Turner-Brown L, Bodfish JW, Dichter GS. Functional neuroimaging of social and nonsocial cognitive control in autism. J Autism Dev Disord. 2013;43:2903–13.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
Metadata
Title
A few of my favorite things: circumscribed interests in autism are not accompanied by increased attentional salience on a personalized selective attention task
Authors
Owen E. Parsons
Andrew P. Bayliss
Anna Remington
Publication date
01-12-2017
Publisher
BioMed Central
Published in
Molecular Autism / Issue 1/2017
Electronic ISSN: 2040-2392
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s13229-017-0132-1

Other articles of this Issue 1/2017

Molecular Autism 1/2017 Go to the issue

Research

ADHD-related symptoms and attention profiles in the unaffected siblings of probands with autism spectrum disorder: focus on the subtypes of autism and Asperger’s disorder

Research

Zebrafish knockout of Down syndrome gene, DYRK1A, shows social impairments relevant to autism

Research

Identification of autism-related MECP2 mutations by whole-exome sequencing and functional validation

Research

Evaluating the quality of peer interactions in children and adolescents with autism with the Penn Interactive Peer Play Scale (PIPPS)

Research

Glutathione metabolism in the prefrontal brain of adults with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder: an MRS study

Research

Prospective investigation of FOXP1 syndrome