Relationship between autonomic arousal and attention orienting in children and adolescents with ADHD, autism and co-occurring ADHD and autism
Relationship between autonomic arousal and attention orienting in children and adolescents with ADHD, autism and co-occurring ADHD and autism
Introduction: Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) may be characterized by different profiles of visual attention orienting. However, there are also many inconsistent findings emerging from the literature, probably due to the fact that the potential effect of autonomic arousal (which has been proposed to be dysregulated in these conditions) on oculomotor performance has not been investigated before. Moreover, it is not known how visual attention orienting is affected by the co-occurrence of ADHD and autism in people with a double diagnosis.
Methods: 99 children/adolescents with or without ADHD and/or autism (age 10.79 ± 2.05 years, 65% boys) completed an adapted version of the gap-overlap task (with baseline and overlap trials only). The social salience and modality of stimuli were manipulated between trials. Eye movements and pupil size were recorded. We compared saccadic reaction times (SRTs) between diagnostic groups and investigated if a trial-by-trial association existed between pre-saccadic pupil size and SRTs.
Results: faster orienting (shorter SRT) was found for baseline compared to overlap trials, faces compared to non-face stimuli and–more evidently in children without ADHD and/or autism–for multi-modal compared to uni-modal stimuli. We also found a linear negative association between pre-saccadic pupil size and SRTs, in autistic participants (without ADHD), and a quadratic association in children with ADHD (without autism), for which SRTs were slower when intra-individual pre-saccadic pupil size was smallest or largest.
Conclusion: our findings are in line with previous literature and indicate a possible effect of dysregulated autonomic arousal on oculomotor mechanisms in autism and ADHD, which should be further investigated in future research studies with larger samples, to reliably investigate possible differences between children with single and dual diagnoses.
ADHD, Autism, Eye-tracking, Gap-overlap, Pupil, Visual attention
306-321
Bellato, Alessio
0ee4c34f-3850-4883-8b82-5717b74990f7
Arora, Iti
0e82c245-276b-4fe7-861b-b360a177297e
Kochhar, Puja
79055bcb-b251-409a-87ac-c8d62a5e4faa
Ropar, Danielle
9b2bfacc-9047-4961-9cf3-874993e7c021
Hollis, Chris
fe8adc7a-cfcd-4966-b397-1dd22048bbc8
Groom, Madeleine J.
0950cda7-451f-40c3-a4e2-e6df8629de55
September 2023
Bellato, Alessio
0ee4c34f-3850-4883-8b82-5717b74990f7
Arora, Iti
0e82c245-276b-4fe7-861b-b360a177297e
Kochhar, Puja
79055bcb-b251-409a-87ac-c8d62a5e4faa
Ropar, Danielle
9b2bfacc-9047-4961-9cf3-874993e7c021
Hollis, Chris
fe8adc7a-cfcd-4966-b397-1dd22048bbc8
Groom, Madeleine J.
0950cda7-451f-40c3-a4e2-e6df8629de55
Bellato, Alessio, Arora, Iti, Kochhar, Puja, Ropar, Danielle, Hollis, Chris and Groom, Madeleine J.
(2023)
Relationship between autonomic arousal and attention orienting in children and adolescents with ADHD, autism and co-occurring ADHD and autism.
Cortex, 166, .
(doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2023.06.002).
Abstract
Introduction: Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) may be characterized by different profiles of visual attention orienting. However, there are also many inconsistent findings emerging from the literature, probably due to the fact that the potential effect of autonomic arousal (which has been proposed to be dysregulated in these conditions) on oculomotor performance has not been investigated before. Moreover, it is not known how visual attention orienting is affected by the co-occurrence of ADHD and autism in people with a double diagnosis.
Methods: 99 children/adolescents with or without ADHD and/or autism (age 10.79 ± 2.05 years, 65% boys) completed an adapted version of the gap-overlap task (with baseline and overlap trials only). The social salience and modality of stimuli were manipulated between trials. Eye movements and pupil size were recorded. We compared saccadic reaction times (SRTs) between diagnostic groups and investigated if a trial-by-trial association existed between pre-saccadic pupil size and SRTs.
Results: faster orienting (shorter SRT) was found for baseline compared to overlap trials, faces compared to non-face stimuli and–more evidently in children without ADHD and/or autism–for multi-modal compared to uni-modal stimuli. We also found a linear negative association between pre-saccadic pupil size and SRTs, in autistic participants (without ADHD), and a quadratic association in children with ADHD (without autism), for which SRTs were slower when intra-individual pre-saccadic pupil size was smallest or largest.
Conclusion: our findings are in line with previous literature and indicate a possible effect of dysregulated autonomic arousal on oculomotor mechanisms in autism and ADHD, which should be further investigated in future research studies with larger samples, to reliably investigate possible differences between children with single and dual diagnoses.
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Accepted/In Press date: 8 June 2023
e-pub ahead of print date: 28 June 2023
Published date: September 2023
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
We would like to thank the families and children who have been involved in the SAAND study and in general in research, without whose contribution none of our projects as researchers and academics would be feasible. This study was funded by The University of Nottingham (Vice Chancellor's Scholarship for Research Excellence), The Waterloo Foundation–Child Development Fund (Grant Number 980-365 ), The Baily Thomas Charitable Fund , and The National Institute for Health Research Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre Mental Health & Technology Theme (Grant Number BRC-1215-20003 ).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s)
Keywords:
ADHD, Autism, Eye-tracking, Gap-overlap, Pupil, Visual attention
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Local EPrints ID: 481994
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/481994
ISSN: 0010-9452
PURE UUID: 1619d580-e7fb-4007-b95f-bd2fbefa069a
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Date deposited: 14 Sep 2023 16:53
Last modified: 18 Mar 2024 04:16
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Author:
Alessio Bellato
Author:
Iti Arora
Author:
Puja Kochhar
Author:
Danielle Ropar
Author:
Chris Hollis
Author:
Madeleine J. Groom
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