Reduced distractor interference in neurotypical adults with high expression of autistic traits irrespective of stimulus type

Abstract

Attention atypicality is evident in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and its broader phenotype with previous studies suggesting that in some cases participants can be more efficient at ignoring distracting irrelevant information. However, it is not clear to what extent this improved filtering capacity is driven by perceptual atypicality, such as local bias or atypical face processing, which is also sometimes reported in these populations. For instance, better ability to ignore the global aspect of a display could stem from a local perceptual bias rather than from improved distractor inhibition. To test whether distractor suppression per se, is associated with high expression of autistic traits, in the present study a large cohort of neurotypical participants (n = 218), in whom expression of autistic traits was assessed, performed two nonspatial attention selection tasks with different categories of stimuli (global/local and face/scene). Importantly, both tasks involved a conflict with one aspect of the stimuli designated as the target and the other designated as the distractor. Across the two experiments adults with high autistic traits were overall, better able to ignore distractors than adults with low autistic traits, irrespective of the type of perceptual processing involved. These results support the notion that autistic tendencies are associated with increased attention filtering (at least when target and distractor remain constant) which is not dependent on perceptual biases. Thus, future work in the broader autism phenotype should explicitly consider the effect played by attention mechanisms in this population. Autism Res 2018, 11: 1345–1355. © 2018 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Lay Summary In the present study, we show that neurotypical adults with high autistic traits are better able to avoid distraction from conspicuous (but completely irrelevant) distractors when told in advance to do so. This ability is not affected by the type of visual input (for instance, whether the distractor is a face or whether small rather than large letters should be reported). This finding could be important in better understanding the way attention is utilized in Autism.

How Cognitive Control, Autistic and Schizotypal Traits Shape Context Adaptation of Divergent Thinking

“…Notably, these results also suggest that unlike reactive control, which appears to facilitate context adaptation in individuals with high positive schizotypy and low focus of attention (Figure 4c), proactive control facilitates context adaptation in individuals with low positive schizotypy and high focus of attention (Figure 4a). This is consistent with previous research suggesting that individuals with contrasting autistic and positive schizotypy trait profiles appear to be differentially reliant on proactive versus reactive control strategies (Abu-Akel et al, 2018;Niendam et al, 2014;Spaniol et al, 2018).…”

“…Since the correlation analyses in our study showed only support for the association between positive schizotypal traits and reactive control tendencies, the contribution of increasing autistic traits to improvement in context adaptation under proactive control remains unresolved. However, if individuals with high schizotypal traits are similar to patients with schizophrenia in that they can engage reactive but not proactive control mechanisms (Lesh et al, 2013), the co-presence of autistic traits, which has been associated with greater utilization of proactive control strategies (Spaniol et al, 2018), appears to somehow restore the ability for these individuals to flexibly engage proactive control. It should be noted, however, that while healthy participants are expected to flexibly engage these modes of cognitive control (Marklund & Persson, 2012), our results suggest that this might be maximally present among individuals in whom both high levels of autistic and positive trait dimensions are co-present.…”

“…Rominger et al (2017) also reported that the positive association between positive schizotypy and divergent thinking might coincide with reduced top-down cognitive control, measured in terms of reduced inhibitory control of auditory information. In contrast, autistic traits appear to be associated with enhanced performance on tasks requiring proactive control and worse performance in tasks requiring reactive control (Abu-Akel et al, 2018;Spaniol et al, 2018). For example, Spaniol et al (2018) have linked the deployment of proactive control to performance benefits observed in individual with high autistic traits on tasks that required shifting from local to global contexts as well as from social to nonsocial contexts.…”

“…In contrast, autistic traits appear to be associated with enhanced performance on tasks requiring proactive control and worse performance in tasks requiring reactive control (Abu-Akel et al, 2018;Spaniol et al, 2018). For example, Spaniol et al (2018) have linked the deployment of proactive control to performance benefits observed in individual with high autistic traits on tasks that required shifting from local to global contexts as well as from social to nonsocial contexts. We are not aware of studies that investigated the role of cognitive control with respect to the association of autistic traits with divergent thinking.…”

“…We further hypothesized that this association would likely be moderated by the relative levels of autistic and positive schizotypal traits within the individual, given evidence suggesting that these traits might be associated with contrasting cognitive control strategies and effects on divergent thinking. Specifically, if autistic and positive schizotypal traits were, respectively, associated with proactive and reactive control strategy preferences (Abu-Akel et al, 2018;Niendam et al, 2014;Spaniol et al, 2018), it might be conceivable to predict better context adaptation with increasing autistic traits and greater proactive tendencies, as well as better context adaptation with increasing positive schizotypal traits and greater reactive tendencies.…”