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Brief Report: Attenuated Emotional Suppression of the Attentional Blink in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Another Non-Social Abnormality?

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Abstract

Twenty-five individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder and 25 typically developed individuals participated in an Attentional Blink paradigm to determine whether emotional words would capture attention similarly in the two groups. Whilst the emotionality of words facilitated attention in typical comparison participants, this effect was attenuated in the ASD group. The magnitude of the emotional modulation of attention in ASD also correlated significantly with participants’ VIQ, which was not observed for the comparison group. Together these observations replicate and extend the findings of Corden et al. (J Autism Develop Disord 38:1072–1080, 2008) and implicate abnormalities in emotional processes outside the broader context of social cognition in ASD. We discuss our findings in relation to possible abnormalities in amygdala function that may underlie the disorder.

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Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Notes

  1. These effect sizes are calculated on the basis of the Greenhouse Geisser adjusted degrees of freedom.

  2. It should be noted that difference scores between emotionally charged and neutral T2s yield the same pattern of results, which is not surprising given that semantic distinctiveness did not seem to facilitate T2 detection during the AB time-window. We present difference scores based on male first name T2s here as these more conservatively estimate the impact of emotion on the AB.

  3. Correlations between the magnitude of the emotional modulation of the AB and Performance IQ or Full-scale IQ were not significant for either group of participants.

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Acknowledgments

The work reported in this paper was in part supported by a grant from the Medical Research Council (MRC-UK).

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  1. Autism Research Group, Department of Psychology, City University, Northampton Square, London, EC1V 0HB, UK

    Sebastian B. Gaigg & Dermot M. Bowler

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  1. Sebastian B. Gaigg
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  2. Dermot M. Bowler
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Correspondence to Sebastian B. Gaigg.

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Gaigg, S.B., Bowler, D.M. Brief Report: Attenuated Emotional Suppression of the Attentional Blink in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Another Non-Social Abnormality?. J Autism Dev Disord 39, 1211–1217 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-009-0719-2

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