The development of visual attention in persons with autism /

• Main Author: Grivas, Anna
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: McGill University 2004
• Subjects: Attention.; Visual perception.; Down syndrome.
• Online Access: http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=83106

A forced choice reaction time (RT) task was used to assess developmental changes in filtering and the related ability to narrow the focus of the attentional lens among persons with autism as compared to a group of typically developing children matched on different standardized measures. The participants included 35 persons with autism (CAs between 8.3 and 13.2 years, M = 9.8 years) and 35 typically developing children (CAs between 4.8 and 7.3 years, M = 5.9 years) between the mental ages (MA) of 5 and 8 years. The measures used for matching include the Leiter International Performance Scale - Revised (Leiter-R; Roid and Miller, 1997), the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test - Third Edition (PPVT-III; Dunn and Dunn, 1997), and the Expressive One Word Vocabulary Test (EOWVT; Gardner, 1990). The conditions varied with regard to the presence or absence of distractors, their proximity (none, close, and far) to a target stimulus, and the presence or absence of a visual window within which the target stimulus was presented. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)