Enhanced Visual Search for a Conjunctive Target in Autism: A Research Note

TLDR

Visual search performance is thought to depend on target–distractor similarity, with greater similarity slowing search. The study compared children with autism and typically developing controls on a feature search task and a conjunctive search task, each involving a letter target among letter distractors differing in colour and shape. Control children showed slower reaction times in the conjunctive task than in the feature task, whereas children with autism exhibited no slowing and were faster than controls on the conjunctive task.

Abstract

Children with and without autism were compared on two visual search tasks in which a letter target appeared among two sets of letter distracters. In one task, the target shared colour with one set of distracters but was unique in shape‐the feature search task. In the other, the conjunctive search task, the target shared colour with one set and shape with another set of distracters. Although search was slower in the conjunctive task than the feature task in normally developing control children, children with autism showed no significant slowing in reaction time in the conjunctive task and were faster than control children in this task. This result is discussed in the light of theories of visual search which state that rate of search is determined by the degree of similarity between target and distracters.