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Eye Tracking Reveals Impaired Attentional Disengagement Associated with Sensory Response Patterns in Children with Autism

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Abstract

This study used a gap-overlap paradigm to examine the impact of distractor salience and temporal overlap on the ability to disengage and orient attention in 50 children (4–13 years) with ASD, DD and TD, and associations between attention and sensory response patterns. Results revealed impaired disengagement and orienting accuracy in ASD. Disengagement was impaired across all groups during temporal overlap for dynamic stimuli compared to static, but only ASD showed slower disengagement from multimodal relative to unimodal dynamic stimuli. Attentional disengagement had differential associations with distinct sensory response patterns in ASD and DD. Atypical sensory processing and temporal binding appear to be intertwined with development of disengagement in ASD, but longitudinal studies are needed to unravel causal pathways.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported in part by several grants from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute for Child Health and Human Development including R01-HD42168 (to G.T.B.), T32-HD40127 (post-doc support for S.E.S.), T32-HD07376 (post-doc support for M.S.D) and P30-HD03110 (core support for participant recruitment through the North Carolina Autism Research Registry), as well as a training grant 325D070011 from the Office of Special Education Programs at the U.S. Department of Education (doctoral support for M.S.D.), and a pilot grant from the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute (NC TraCS), funded by the National Institutes of Health 1UL1TR001111. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funding agencies. We appreciate the statistical support of Chris Wiesen at the Odum Institute. We also appreciate the consultation of Jed Elison, Ph.D., and the staff who collected the data, especially Rebecca Stephens and Margaret O’Brien. We thank the families whose participation made this study possible.

Author contributions

MSD and GTB initiated the idea for and design of the study, and secured funding through grants. MSD, JCB, and GTB developed the stimuli and task parameters. JCB programmed the stimuli and parameters into Tobii. MSD piloted and collected data, and tracked participants with help from research assistants. JCB extracted raw data and wrote programs to clean the data. SES conducted data management and statistical analyses in consultation with statisticians and co-authors. GTB and AB consulted on design and analyses throughout the study. All five authors contributed to the interpretation of the analysis, writing of the manuscript, and all authors read/approved the final manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Maura Sabatos-DeVito

  2. Department of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Sarah E. Schipul & Aysenil Belger

  3. Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Sarah E. Schipul, Aysenil Belger & Grace T. Baranek

  4. Department of Allied Health Sciences, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    John C. Bulluck & Grace T. Baranek

  5. Duke-UNC Brain Imaging and Analysis Center, Durham, NC, USA

    Aysenil Belger

  6. Duke Center for Autism and Brain Development, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA

    Maura Sabatos-DeVito

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  1. Maura Sabatos-DeVito
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Correspondence to Maura Sabatos-DeVito.

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Sabatos-DeVito, M., Schipul, S.E., Bulluck, J.C. et al. Eye Tracking Reveals Impaired Attentional Disengagement Associated with Sensory Response Patterns in Children with Autism. J Autism Dev Disord 46, 1319–1333 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-015-2681-5

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