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Salient Social Cues are Prioritized in Autism Spectrum Disorders Despite Overall Decrease in Social Attention

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Abstract

Diminished social attention is often considered to be a central deficit in autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). We further investigate this hypothesis by measuring the distracting power of social and non-social stimuli in the context of a Stroop task among children with ASD and typically developing controls (TDCs). Our results show that Stroop interference increases with social versus non-social distracters in TDCs, whereas the opposite pattern occurs in ASD. Within social stimuli, however, the superiority of direct gaze previously reported in the literature did not differ between the groups. Our data thus suggest that ASD children assign less weight to social than non-social stimuli, but that within social signals, salient stimuli remain prioritized.

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Acknowledgments

FH and CC were supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [grant code RES-000-22-3136]. CC was also supported, in part, by Health Research Grants from the Pennsylvania Department of Health (SAP# 4100047863 and 410042728). The authors also wish to warmly thank Natasha Tonge for carefully proofreading the manuscript, Catherine Molesworth for her help in data collection and the families, children, and staff who took part in this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre (MRC), Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College University, London, UK

    Coralie Chevallier & Francesca Happé

  2. Center for Autism Research, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, 3535 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA

    Coralie Chevallier

  3. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) & Aix-Marseille Université, Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive (UMR 7290) & Fédération de Recherche 3C (FR 3512), Marseille, France

    Pascal Huguet

  4. Centre de Recherche de l’Institut du Cerveau et de la Moelle épinière, UMR-S975, Université Pierre et Marie Curie-Paris 6, Paris, France

    Nathalie George

  5. CNRS, UMR 7225, CRICM, Paris, France

    Nathalie George

  6. Inserm, U 975, CRICM, Paris, France

    Nathalie George

  7. Laboratoire de Psychopathologie et Neuropsychologie (LPN EA2027), Université Paris 8, Saint-Denis, France

    Laurence Conty

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  1. Coralie Chevallier
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Correspondence to Coralie Chevallier.

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Chevallier, C., Huguet, P., Happé, F. et al. Salient Social Cues are Prioritized in Autism Spectrum Disorders Despite Overall Decrease in Social Attention. J Autism Dev Disord 43, 1642–1651 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-012-1710-x

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