Vestner, T., Gehdu, B.K., Gray, K.L.H. et al. (1 more author) (2024) Autistic adults exhibit a typical search advantage for facing dyads. Autism Research, 17 (12). pp. 2572-2578. ISSN 1939-3792
Abstract
Recent findings obtained with non-autistic participants indicate that pairs of facing individuals (face-to-face dyadic targets) are found faster than pairs of non-facing individuals (back-to-back dyadic targets) when hidden among distractor pairings (e.g., pairs of individuals arranged face-to-back) in visual search displays. These results suggest that facing dyads may compete for observers' attention more effectively than non-facing dyads. In principle, such an advantage might aid the detection of social interactions and facilitate social learning. Autistic individuals are known to exhibit differences in visual processing that impede their perception of other individuals. At present, however, little is known about multi-actor visual processing in autism. Here, we sought to determine whether autistic individuals show a typical search advantage for facing dyads. In an online study, autistic and non-autistic participants were tasked with finding target dyads (pairs of faces arranged face-to-face or back-to-back) embedded among distractor dyads (pairs of faces arranged face-to-back). Relative to the non-autistic controls, the autistic participants took slightly longer to locate target dyads. However, a clear and comparable search advantage for facing dyads was seen in both participant groups. This preliminary evidence suggests that multi-actor processing of autistic participants exhibits typical sensitivity to dyadic arrangement.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | autism; search advantage for facing dyads; social interactions; visual search |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Medicine and Health (Leeds) > School of Psychology (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 11 Feb 2025 12:47 |
Last Modified: | 11 Feb 2025 12:47 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Identification Number: | 10.1002/aur.3265 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:223116 |