Impaired disengagement of attention in young children with autism

“…few particular non-social aspects of the environment, which is expressed in repetitive behavior, intense preoccupations about specific and narrow topics, and difficulties in shifting attention (Courchesne et al. 1994; Goldstein et al. 2001a; Happé 1994; Landry & Bryson 2004; Murray et al. 2005).”

“7) [14-42] 22.”

“A number of studies using this task have demonstrated impairments in children and adults with autism both behaviorally as well as neurophysiologically (13,14).”

“Landry and Bryson (2004) examined gap-overlap performance in children with ASD, CAmatched children with Downs syndrome, and MA-matched TD children, and demonstrated that the ASD group showed significantly increased latencies to disengage visual attention (on overlap trials), but similar response…”

“To begin to address this question, it is important to recognize the vital but perhaps divergent roles of both forms of joint attention in human social learning [Bruner, 1975, 1995].”

“One possibility is that a core deficit in ASD is in disengaging or switching attention ~e.g., Allen & Courchesne, 2001; Landry & Bryson, 2004!.”

“Consistent with this model, our finding that children with ASD displayed increased perseveration and detail orientation parallels findings of previous studies indicating that attentional abnormalities in autism involve impairments in attentional disengagement [Landry and Bryson, 2004; Zwaigenbaum et al., 2005] and att…”

“Studies specifically using the gap-overlap task have demonstrated impairments in children and adults with autism both behaviourally (Landry & Bryson, 2004; van der Geest et al., 2001) as well as neurophysiologically (Kawakubo et al., 2007).”

“Deficits in visual attention occur in young children with autism (Landry and Bryson, 2004) and may be among the first abnormalities detectable in infants who are subsequently diagnosed with autism (Zwaigenbaum et al., 2005).”

“Some studies have reported structural differences in attentional functions between ASD and ADHD patients, while others suggest these disorders present identical deficiencies (7, 8).”

“Furthermore, as attention disengagement deficits and joint attention deficits have both been observed in autism ( Landry & Bryson, 2004; 64 Vaughan Van Hecke et al.”

“…attention switching atypicalites in WS (e.g. Cornish, Scerif, & Karmiloff-Smith, 2007; Scerif, Cornish, Wilding, Driver, & Karmiloff-Smith, 2004; Brown et al., 2003) it is likely that individuals with autism have difficulty with this aspect of visual attention (e.g. Landry & Bryson, 2004).”

“…diagnosis of autism can only be made from around three years of age, most findings regarding preference for, or orienting to, various social and non-social stimuli have primarily been based on studies with older children and adults diagnosed with autism and have given rise to mixed findings.”

“Here, some evidence suggests that children with ASD show relatively specific problems in disengaging attention (e.g. Landry & Bryson, 2004), although others find generally slowed orienting (Landry & Parker, 2013), and effects may be modulated by the social content of the stimuli (e.g. Chawarska,…”

“Problems with shifting attention are also observed in the form of difficulty disengaging attention to perform a task (e.g., Landry and Bryson, 2004).”

“…disengaging fixation and initiating voluntary saccades reported in some studies investigating nonsocial aspects of attention in autism (e.g., Landry & Bryson, 2004), it is important to note that in the studies reviewed below, the central cue was extinguished before the onset of the target.”

“In Landry and Bryson (2004), the control group was significantly younger than the other two groups.”

“Casey, Gordon, Manheim & Rumsey, 1993; Wainwright-Sharp & Bryson, 1993; Goldberg, Lasker, Zee, Garth, Tien & Landa, 2002; Landry & Bryson, 2004 ).”

“…with autism on shift trials in which the fixation point remained on screen, but no latency differences on disengage trials, when the fixation point was removed before the peripheral target was presented (Landry & Bryson, 2004), suggesting difficulties disengaging attention from the fixation point.”

“Given prior studies of reaction time to disengage in children with ASD (40), reaction time following direct cueing was measured across all cueing trials.”

“The implicit assumption has been that ‘more is better’; however, the ability to shift visual attention from people to relevant environmental stimuli is likely to be more socially and communicatively advantageous ( Landry & Bryson, 2004 ).”

“The disengagement aspect of these findings was further investigated by Landry and Bryson (2004) who measured latencies of eye-movements towards a peripheral target following valid or invalid cues.”

“Children with autism have difficulty disengaging attention once it is captured by stimuli (Landry and Bryson 2004).”

“It is also possible that this impairment is related to difficulties with attentional disengagement, that is, a tendency for attention, once engaged, to remain fixed ( Landry & Bryson, 2004 ).”

“The ability to disengage and shift visual attention may also be impaired (Harris et al., 1999; Landry and Bryson, 2004; Townsend et al., 1996).”

“Decreased initiation of joint attention (e.g., through pointing) is one of the most reliable early signs of autism (Dawson et al., 2004).”

“This expectation alone accounts for the mutual exclusivity bias (Diesendruck & Markson, 2001).”

“Slower attention disengagement has been shown to characterize the visual pattern in Sibs ASD who will develop ASD already at 6 months of life [57] and is known to persist throughout childhood [58].”

“Similarly, individuals with ASD also perform worse than controls on certain tasks assessing attention, executive functioning, and motor functioning (Dawson et al., 2002; Hill, 2004; Landry and Bryson, 2004; Provost et al., 2007; Robinson et al., 2009).”

“Unlike reported high blink conditioning for individual with ASD in general [42], these low blinks could be attributed to ‘sticky attention’ that this population sometimes exhibits [43].”

“…of autism such as sticky attention, wherein familar stimuli remain engaging for unusually long periods of time while novel stimuli seem challenging, could arise from weak habituation and hypersensitivity to novel stimuli (Landry and Bryson, 2004; Sinha et al., 2014; Vogels and Abbott, 2007).”

“These findings are not consistent with previous reports of deficits in attention disengagement for young children with autism (Landry & Bryson, 2004) and for a subgroup of high-risk siblings who receive a later diagnosis of autism (Zwaigenbaum et al., 2005).”

“Mirroring others’ emotions relates to empathy and inter- personal competence in children.”

“Disengagement has been described as “a basic mechanism by which we regulate emotional upset” (Landry & Bryson, 2004, p. 1115).”

“In addition, even outside of social interactions, children with autism have difficulty with shifting attention between stimuli ( Landry & Bryson, 2004 ).”

“…attentional disengagement by examining the response time (RT) differences to targets appearing with and without a central fixation, have also demonstrated that children with ASD evidence significant impairments in disengaging visual attention (Elsabbagh et al., 2009; Landry & Bryson, 2004).”

“Hit frequency is of particular importance as large hit frequency may be indicative of erratic gaze, and an atypically small hit frequency may be indicative of difficulties shifting attention within environments (e.g. “sticky attention”) (Landry and Bryson, 2004).”

“Landry and Bryson (2004) found that children with ASD were slower in the ‘overlap’ condition (in this condition a simple shape is presented centrally briefly, then another stimulus appears in one of two lateral positions.”

“…exploration requires disengaging and shifting gaze across different locations, and the perseveration of this sticky phenomenon at 7 months of age is an early feature of later emerging autism (Elison et al., 2013) that persists with disengagement difficulties in childhood (Landry and Bryson, 2004).”

“Studying the shifting of visual attention from non-social stimuli, Landry and Bryson [49] and Elison and colleagues [50] remarked a systematic delay in the reaction times of ASD children.”

“…1998; Johnson et al., 2005; Mundy & Neale, 2000; Schultz, 2005) or in some more general attentional process contributing to the development of social skills (e.g., Bryson et al., 2004; Kawakubo et al., 2007; Landry & Bryson, 2004; van der Geest, Kemner, Camfferman, Verbaten, & van Engeland, 2001).”

“3 Gap/Null/Overlap Paradigm—This paradigm is commonly used to assess eye movement and attention and has been employed in a number of autism studies [29, 37, 67-69].”

“In 2002, Landry and Bryson again demonstrated that young children with autism had impaired disengagement of attention (Landry & Bryson, 2004).”

“The third explanation is based on the finding that children with autism have difficulties disengaging their attention from a stimulus and shifting attention between two stimuli even when the stimuli are not social in nature (Landry & Bryson, 2004; Townsend, Courchesne & Egaas, 1996).”

“…the agent’s rational action by evaluating its logic within the constraints of the situation, perhaps because of difficulties in shifting attention (Landry & Bryson, 2004), in integration of multiple information (U. Frith, 2003), and in goal understanding (D’Entremont & Yazbek, 2007; Zalla et…”

“Moreover, enhanced perception may be associated with hyper-attention to details (Baron-Cohen et al. 2009) or difficulty with disengagement of attention (e.g., Landry and Bryson 2004), which may contribute to successful completion of some cognitive tasks.”

“…is not completely consistent, most studies have found enhanced ability in this population to focus on the details of visual stimuli, and difficulties with disengaging attention from such stimuli [Courchesne et al., 1994; Jones & Klin, 2008; Landry & Bryson, 2004; Travers, Klinger, & Klinger, 2010].”

“…is often highly focused, characterized by unusually low distractibility, inability to disengage attention, deficits in divided attention, seeing the details but not the big picture, and intense involvement with a single special interest (Casey et al., 1993; Frith, 2003; Landry and Bryson, 2004).”

“…attentional focus and switching the locus of their attention (Elsabbagh et al. 2009; Facoetti et al. 2008; Ibanez et al. 2008; Kikuchi et al. 2011; Landry and Bryson 2004; van der Geest et al. 2001), especially in patterns that include either more complex social cues or long coherent social…”

“Autistic children’s resistance to distraction was quantified by Landry and Bryson (2004). Five-year-old autistic children, mental age–matched typically developing children, and chronological age–matched children with Down syndrome focused on a ‘‘very fascinating’’ centrally placed computer monitor on which brightly co…”

“Children with ASD, for example, may experience attention deficits primarily as difficulties in shifting (Courchesne et al 1994; Hughes et al 1994) or disengaging attention (Landry and Bryson 2004), as opposed to sustaining attention.”

“Finally, being able to show joint attention behaviours and to participate in a triadic interaction, implies attentional processes, like attentional engagement, disengagement and shifting (Leekam 2005).”

“Difficulties with disengaging and shifting attention (Landry and Bryson 2004) and symptoms related to elevated anxiety appear to correlate with EEG amplitudes outside Neuroguide database norms for theta, low alpha and/or high frequency beta with a source in the anterior cingulate.”

“Still other approaches have emphasized the possibility that joint attention deficits in children may be secondary to impairments in primary psychological processes, including identification, attention regulation, or social motivation (e.g., Hobson and Hobson, 2007; Landry and Bryson, 2004; Reddy, 2003).”

“The ability to disengage from previous information is central to executive control (Elsabbagh et al., 2013; Landry & Bryson, 2004) but is not considered in analyses that compare overall RT on congruent (C) and incongruent (I) trials, or the difference between them (I-C; congruency effect).”

“First, Landry and Bryson (2004) found autistic children to react considerably slower than typically developing children and children with Down syndrome on a reaction time task where eye movements were recorded and no button press was required.”

“In addition, difficulty disengaging attention (Landry & Bryson, 2004) and shifting attention between objects and people (Lewy & Dawson, 1992; McArthur & Adamson, 1996; Swettenham et al., 1998) could also contribute to children engaging in repetitive actions with select objects (Turner, 1999).”

“These findings of behavioral and neural abnormalities in alerting and executive control of attention in ASD may suggest core attentional deficits, which require further investigation.”

“This failure to attend may be due to a decreased social interest (e.g., Ingersoll, in press) or abnormal attention shifting (Landry & Bryson, 2004).”

“…interest for infants at risk for ASD given the difficulties infants and children with ASD demonstrate in social communication, including gaze, social orienting, and attention shifting (Dawson et al. 1998; Landry and Bryson 2004; Nadig et al. 2007; Ozonoff et al. 2010, Zwaigenbaum et al. 2005).”

“These findings may reflect the difficulty young children with autism have in disengaging and shifting attention (Landry and Bryson 2004).”

“Researchers have noted, for instance, that individuals with autism have limited capacity in disengaging and shifting attention from a stimulus or task to another (Landry & Bryson, 2004; Wainwright-Sharp & Bryson, 1993).”

“The implications of these findings for understanding the development of attentional control in naturalistic settings are discussed.”