18788
Attention to Emotional Faces in Adults As a Function of Autism-Related Attention Switching Abilities
Research examining autism spectrum disorders (ASD) has demonstrated that autistic individuals experience attentional and emotion identification impairments (Gross, 2004; Keehn, Mueller, & Townsend, 2013). Absent in the literature, however, is an examination of how the combination of both constructs is related to autism. Studying these two variables in concert is an important, innovative step, as individuals with autism are challenged in tasks assessing emotional processing, yet have been shown to perform equally well or better than neurotypical individuals in attentional tasks requiring the identification of a particular stimulus among distractors (e.g., Plaisted, O-Riordan, & Baron-Cohen, 1998). Also, it remains poorly understood how those with high, but subthreshold clinical, levels of autistic behaviors respond in an attention-demanding task with emotional identification.
Objectives:
The goal of this research was to test whether adults with varying levels of self-reported autistic behaviors would perform differently on a task that combined attentional processing and emotional identification.
Methods:
Participants were 111 college students (41.3% men) who were not formally diagnosed with ASD but completed the Autism Quotient (AQ) that assesses the presence of autistic behaviors. The AQ has five sub-scales assessing different autistic behaviors including social skill, attention switching, communication, imagination, and attention to detail (Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Skinner, Martin, & Clubley, 2001). Participants completed a modified visual search task that typically measures attention by assessing the response speed if there is a discrepant stimulus amongst stimuli displaying the same properties (Plaisted et al., 2010). We modified the task by using emotional faces as stimuli that allowed us to simultaneously assess emotion identification and attention. The faces displayed either basic emotions (i.e., happiness or sadness) or complex emotions (i.e., surprise or fear). For each trial, a face displaying a target emotion was surrounded by 8 or 16 faces displaying a discrepant emotion; stimuli stayed on the screen until the participant identified the target emotion.
Results:
Results of a mixed-model ANOVA indicated a significant target emotion x discrepant emotion x AQ Attention Switching subscale group interaction, F(1, 65) = 5.28, p = .025. The results demonstrated that participants with good attention-switching ability had faster reaction times (RTs) to basic vs. complex emotions, F(1, 43) = 52.15, p < .001, and quicker RTs when the discrepant emotions were basic vs complex, F(1, 43) = 8.41, p = .006. Participants with poor attention-switching (strong focus of attention) showed these same main effects but also had a target emotion x discrepant emotion interaction, F(1, 22) = 18.80, p < .001. Specifically, these participants demonstrated slower RTs when both target and discrepant emotions were complex (see Figure 1).
Conclusions:
These results indicate that undergraduates with poorer attention-switching ability have a difficult time identifying discrepant emotions when all faces display complex emotions. Individuals with more autistic behaviors specific to attentional control may perform less well in situations involving multiple complex emotions. These findings may help shed light on the social processing challenges associated with ASD in terms of interpreting facial emotions.