ERIC Number: EJ1310541
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2021-Oct
Pages: 15
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0162-3257
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Available Date: N/A
Acquisition and Use of 'Priors' in Autism: Typical in Deciding Where to Look, Atypical in Deciding What Is There
Allenmark, Fredrik; Shi, Zhuanghua; Pistorius, Rasmus L.; Theisinger, Laura A.; Koutsouleris, Nikolaos; Falkai, Peter; Müller, Hermann J.; Falter-Wagner, Christine M.
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, v51 n10 p3744-3758 Oct 2021
Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are thought to under-rely on prior knowledge in perceptual decision-making. This study examined whether this applies to decisions of attention allocation, of relevance for 'predictive-coding' accounts of ASD. In a visual search task, a salient but task-irrelevant distractor appeared with higher probability in one display half. Individuals with ASD learned to avoid 'attentional capture' by distractors in the probable region as effectively as control participants--indicating typical priors for deploying attention. However, capture by a 'surprising' distractor at an unlikely location led to greatly slowed identification of a subsequent target at that location--indicating that individuals with ASD attempt to control surprise (unexpected attentional capture) by over-regulating parameters in post-selective decision-making.
Descriptors: Autism, Pervasive Developmental Disorders, Prior Learning, Decision Making, Attention, Interference (Learning), Visual Perception
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
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Language: English
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