CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 191Autism Spectrum Disorder ResearchChild and Animal Learning DevelopmentDevelopmental and Educational Neuropsychology

Attentional Capacities in Children with Autism: Is There a General Deficit in Shifting Focus?

Pascualvaca, Daisy M., Fantie, Bryan D., Papageorgiou, Maria, Mirsky, Allan F.·1998·Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders
DOI 10.1023/a:1026091809650
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Twenty-three children with autism and two control groups completed an attention battery comprising three versions of the continuous performance test (CPT), a digit cancellation task, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), and two novel, computerized tests of shifting attention (i.e., the Same-Different Computerized Task and the Computerized Matching Task). Children with autism could focus on a particular stimulus and sustain this focus as indicated by their performance on the digit cancellation task and the CPT. Their performance on the WCST suggested problems in some aspects of shifting attention (i.e., disengaging attention). The autism group performed as well as controls on the Same-Different Computerized Task, however, that required successive comparisons between stimuli. This implies that they could, in fact, shift their attention continuously. In addition, they did not differ from controls on the Computerized Matching Task, an analog of the WCST, suggesting that they do not have a general deficit in shifting attention.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1023/a:1026091809650

Cites

43 of 43 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Children with ASD may be less motivated by social than non-social rewards.

    “This finding is consistent with previous research examining the effect of reward type on task performance, which indicates that children with ASD may be less motivated by social than non-social rewards [480,565-568].”

    From Reward circuitry dysfunction in psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders and genetic syndromes: animal models and clinical findings (2012) · cites this paper as [568]

  • Individuals with ASD perform better on a given task when presented by computer rather than live administration by an experimenter, whereas typically-developing comparison groups perform similarly across modalities.

    “multiple studies have reported that individuals with ASD perform better on a given task when presented by computer rather than live administration by an experimenter, whereas typically-developing comparison groups perform similarly across modalities”

    From Can Bilingualism Mitigate Set-Shifting Difficulties in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders? (2019) · cites this paper as Pascualvaca et al., 1998

  • Computerized testing reduces the social demands of face-to-face interactions for children with ASD.

    “The computerized testing modality was used to decrease the social demands of face-to-face interactions for children with ASD, as suggested by prior research on set-shifting in this population (e.g., Ozonoff, 1995;Pascualvaca et al., 1998).”

    From Can Bilingualism Mitigate Set-Shifting Difficulties in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders? (2019) · cites this paper as Pascualvaca et al., 1998

  • Children with ASD have been found to perform better on EF tasks that use computerized rather than live administration by an examiner, which has been attributed to reduced social demands.

    “As discussed in the introduction, children with ASD have been found to exhibit better performance on EF tasks that employ computerized versus live administration by an examiner (Kenworthy et al., 2008;Ozonoff, 1995;Pascualvaca et al., 1998), which has been attributed to the reduced social demands required of them.”

    From Can Bilingualism Mitigate Set-Shifting Difficulties in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders? (2019) · cites this paper as Pascualvaca et al., 1998

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Pascualvaca, D. M., Fantie, B. D., Papageorgiou, M., & Mirsky, A. F.
Affiliations
National Institutes of Health (US)
ORCID
Fantie, Bryan D.
Venue
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
1998-12
Volume
28
Issue
6
Pages
467-478
ISSN
  • 0162-3257 (ISSN-L)
  • 1573-3432
DOI
10.1023/a:1026091809650
OpenAlex
W1538110914
Cited by
191
References
42
Citations by year
2026: 2 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 9 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 7 · 2014: 17 · 2013: 11 · 2012: 15
FWCI
3.19
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
Locations
  • Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Autism Spectrum Disorder Research
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology › Developmental and Educational Neuropsychology
Keywords
autism spectrum disorder, attentional shift, sustained attention, attentional flexibility, children with autism, Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, continuous performance test
MeSH terms
Attention, Autistic Disorder, Child, Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted, Female, Humans, Male, Neuropsychological Tests, Psychometrics, Reference Values, Wechsler Scales

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review