Effects of Autistic Trait-Related Joint Attention on Visual Working Memory

Wang, Zhiyun; Xuan, Bin; Li, Shuo · 2020 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-106325/v1

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Summary

This study investigates how autistic traits influence joint attention (JA) and whether these traits modulate the relationship between JA and visual working memory (VWM). While social attention deficits are well-documented in clinical autism spectrum disorder (ASD) populations, the specific eye movement patterns triggered by gaze cues in non-clinical individuals with varying levels of autistic traits remain unclear. The research aims to determine if high autistic traits reduce sensitivity to social cues compared to non-social cues and if this difference impacts VWM performance during the maintenance phase. The researchers recruited 46 university students, dividing them into high-autistic-trait (high-AQ) and low-autistic-trait (low-AQ) groups based on the top and bottom 20% of scores on the Chinese Autism-Spectrum Quotient. The experimental design combined a cueing paradigm with a change detection task and eye-tracking technology. Participants viewed two irregular polygons as memory items, followed by a cue indicating a location. Cues were either social (gaze direction of eyes) or non-social (dots), with 50% validity. Participants then judged whether a probe matched the memory item at the cued location. The study measured behavioral reaction times (RTs) and accuracy, as well as eye-tracking metrics including fixation counts, fixation time, and entry time into regions of interest. Results indicated distinct differences in attentional processing between the groups. The low-AQ group exhibited significantly shorter reaction times for valid gaze cues compared to invalid ones, demonstrating effective use of social cues. Eye-tracking data confirmed that the low-AQ group had higher fixation proportions, more fixation counts, and shorter entry times into gaze-cued locations. In contrast, the high-AQ group showed no significant RT advantage for gaze cues and did not differ significantly between valid and invalid conditions for either cue type. Instead, the high-AQ group displayed a cueing effect only for dot cues, showing higher fixation proportions and counts for dot-cued locations. This suggests that individuals with high autistic traits are less sensitive to the social significance of gaze and rely more on non-social motion cues. The findings conclude that autistic traits significantly influence the pattern of attention triggered by social versus non-social cues. Individuals with low autistic traits are adept at using gaze cues to direct attention, which facilitates faster visual working memory processing. Conversely, individuals with high autistic traits process gaze cues similarly to non-social cues, ignoring their social meaning. This deficit in joint attention subsequently affects the speed of VWM maintenance. The study highlights that social attention mechanisms are not merely absent in high-autistic-trait individuals but are qualitatively different, relying on non-social processing strategies that may hinder efficient social cognition and memory integration.

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• gaze based attention detection