Joint attention effect on irrelevant stimuli resistance in high functional autism and neurotypical adults

Background and objectives: Clinical practice reveals that individuals with autism characterized by the absence of cognitive impairment (High Functioning Autism-HFA) show difficulty in sharing attention with unfamiliar people. We hypothesized that this difficulty could affect cognitive control by selectively impairing stimulus-encoding or response-selection. Methods: Twenty-one HFA and 23 neurotypical adults were involved in a two-phase study. The first phase was performed at home, through an online link; the second one was held four months later in our laboratory in the presence of two experimenters. A letter-flanker task was administered in both phases. In the Stimulus-Response (SR) conflict condition, the target and flankers were assigned to the same/different response keys. In the Stimulus-Stimulus (SS) conflict condition, the target and flankers were perceptually similar/dissimilar. Two mixed-ANOVAs were conducted on response times and accuracy with Phases (Home vs Lab), Groups (HFA, Neurotypical), SR conditions (congruent, incongruent, neutral) and SS conditions (congruent, incongruent) as factors. Results: Results show that only HFAs' inhibition ability was negatively affected by the experimenters’ presence compared to when they were alone, by reducing accuracy when dealing with an SS conflict. Limitations: The differences between the home-phase and lab-phase sessions require further elaboration to understanding the nature of social interaction during the lab session. Conclusions: These results suggest that, for HFA, the “at home” context, free from social and emotional pressure, allowed them to emphasize their detail-focused cognitive style.