Modulation of attention by socio-emotional scenes in children with autism spectrum disorder

Background: Abnormal attentional processes to socially relevant information may underlie social impairment in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). To examine how these processes are modulated by the emotional salience of the stimuli, we studied the attentional biases to social scenes (happy, sad, and threatening) in ASD children. Method: An emotional dot-probe task was applied to children (from 6 to 12 years old) with Autism Spectrum Disorder without additional language and/or intellectual impairments (ASD; n=25) and age/sex-matched controls (n=25). Results: ASD children showed an attentional bias toward threatening scenes while typically developing children tended to direct their attention towa…