Intact Goal-Driven Attentional Capture in Autistic Adults

Husain, Layal; Berggren, Nick; Remington, Anna; Forster, Sophie · 2021 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.5334/joc.156

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Summary

This study investigates whether goal-driven attentional capture—the involuntary attraction of attention to stimuli matching a current search goal—is reduced or absent in autistic adults. Previous research presented conflicting findings: autistic individuals often show increased distractibility by salient irrelevant information but reduced distractibility by stimuli of personal motivational salience, such as topics of intense interest. This paradox suggested that the automatic guidance of attention by top-down goals might operate differently in autism, potentially reflecting reduced top-down control. To resolve these discrepancies, the authors tested whether autistic adults exhibit intact goal-driven attentional capture compared to neurotypical adults, challenging theories that posit diminished top-down influences on perception in autism. The researchers employed a spatial cueing paradigm with 16 autistic adults and 16 neurotypical adults, matched for age, gender, and non-verbal IQ. Participants searched for a specific color-defined target among distractors. Prior to each search display, a spatially uninformative color cue was presented, which either matched the target color, a nontarget distractor color, or an irrelevant color. Goal-driven capture was measured by reaction time differences between trials where the cue validly predicted the target location versus those where it did not. The study utilized rigorous diagnostic confirmation via the Social Responsiveness Scale and ensured participants had IQ scores above 80. Results demonstrated robust goal-driven attentional capture in both groups. Reaction times were significantly slower when target-color cues appeared in invalid locations compared to valid ones, indicating that attention was involuntarily captured by stimuli matching the search goal. Crucially, there was no significant difference in the magnitude of this capture effect between autistic and neurotypical participants. Bayesian analysis provided substantial evidence for the null hypothesis, confirming that the automatic implementation of top-down attentional goals is intact in autistic adults. While autistic participants exhibited generally slower reaction times, this did not interact with cue validity or type, suggesting the difference was not specific to attentional mechanisms. These findings challenge the hypothesis that autistic individuals have reduced top-down control over attention. The study implies that the mechanisms underlying the automatic guidance of attention by voluntary goals are preserved in autism, at least for simple features like color. This contradicts models suggesting that autistic perception is biased solely toward incoming sensory stimuli without prior perceptual experience. The results also clarify mixed findings from previous studies in children and adolescents, suggesting that goal-driven capture for static features remains intact from mid-childhood into adulthood. Consequently, the reduced distractibility by personally relevant stimuli observed in autism likely stems from mechanisms other than a deficit in goal-driven attentional capture.

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• attention selective divided