Intermodal Perception and Attention Shifting in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Background: Two cognitive processes have been hypothesized to act as the foundation for social-communicative functioning (e.g., Bahrick & Todd, in press): 1) the disengagement and shifting of attention; and 2) intermodal perception. Previous research has shown that both attention shifting and intermodal perception are impaired in children and adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Although researchers have hypothesized that a disturbance in intermodal perception could lead to further impairments in orienting and disengaging attention to multimodal and dynamic events, limited research exists examining how these two processes are interrelated. The present studies examine the linkages between attention and intermodal processing in children with ASD.

Objectives: Through a series of three studies, we examined children with ASD’s ability to shift their attention when presented with multimodal stimuli (both social and nonsocial), increasing in complexity (basic sounds to stories).

Methods: Children with ASD, typically developing children and children with intellectual disabilities, all matched on age and verbal ability were tested using a preferential-looking paradigm, Two identical dynamic images on the right and left sides of the screen (Study 1 and Study 2) or four images on the screen (Study 3) were presented. Stimuli varied in complexity across the three studies, ranging from: a) simple vowel sounds and high frequency sounds (Study 1); b) brief stimuli categorized as either high- (man reciting story), low- (man counting) or non-linguistic (mousetrap) stimuli (Study 2); and c) linguistic (women telling a story) and non-linguistic (piano) stimuli, using a four-screen array (Study 3). For each trial, although all visual tracks were identical, only one screen was synchronous (i.e., the auditory and visual information matched).

Results: Data analyzed to date (one study is currently being analyzed) indicate no differences in shifting attention abilities between ASD and other groups, with comparable numbers and durations of eye fixations across groups for these dynamic stimuli. However, children with ASDs spent less time looking to synchronous screens when linguistic stimuli were presented versus non-linguistic.

Conclusions: The findings of apparently intact general attention shifting skills with dynamic linguistic stimuli, yet differences in selective attention, reflected by less intermodal coordination for those same linguistic stimuli, help to clarify how these two cognitive processes (attention and intermodal perception) are interrelated in children with ASD. Understanding that relationship provides an important link towards evaluating their roles as foundational components for the development of social-communicative functioning in children with and without ASDs.