Decreased coherent motion discrimination in autism spectrum disorder: the role of attentional zoom-out deficit.

Ronconi, Luca; Gori, Simone; Ruffino, Milena; Franceschini, Sandro; Urbani, Barbara; Molteni, Massimo; Facoetti, Andrea · 2012 · DOAJ

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0049019

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Summary

This study investigates the underlying mechanisms of decreased coherent dot motion (CDM) discrimination in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). While previous research linked this deficit to magnocellular-dorsal stream vulnerability or perceptual noise exclusion, the authors hypothesized that an impairment in spatial attention—specifically the ability to "zoom out" the attentional focus to integrate global visual information—might explain the phenomenon. The study aimed to determine whether CDM deficits in ASD are general or specific to certain visual field regions and whether they correlate with attentional zooming abilities and autism symptom severity. The researchers compared 11 children with ASD and 11 typically developing (TD) children, matched for age and cognitive level. Participants performed two tasks. First, a CDM task measured motion perception thresholds in two conditions: central (dots in a central circle) and peripheral (dots in an annulus with an empty center). Second, an attentional zooming task assessed the ability to adjust the size of the attentional focus using small and large cue conditions. Reaction times and accuracy were recorded to evaluate zoom-in and zoom-out mechanisms. Results indicated that children with ASD exhibited a selective impairment in CDM discrimination only in the central condition, performing significantly worse than TD peers, while performance in the peripheral condition did not differ between groups. In the attentional zooming task, children with ASD showed a specific deficit in the zoom-out mechanism, evidenced by an abnormal attentional gradient effect under large cue conditions at short stimulus onset asynchronies. Crucially, within the ASD group, the severity of the zoom-out attentional deficit was positively correlated with CDM thresholds in both central and peripheral conditions. Furthermore, both CDM performance and zoom-out efficiency were significantly correlated with the severity of autism symptoms as measured by the ADOS total score. No such correlations were found in the TD group. The findings suggest that decreased CDM discrimination in ASD is not due to a general magnocellular stream deficit or noise exclusion failure, but rather stems from a dysfunction in the attentional network, specifically the inability to broaden the attentional focus. This "zoom-out" deficit prevents efficient global integration of visual stimuli, particularly when information is centrally located. The study links this attentional rigidity to core social cognition deficits in ASD, supporting models of enhanced perceptual functioning where low-level visual processing is intact but high-level integrative processes are impaired due to inefficient top-down attentional control.

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• peripheral attention