1. Visual search in ADHD, ASD and ASD + ADHD: overlapping or dissociating disorders?
- Author
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Monica Biscaldi, Chara Ioannou, Giuseppe Boccignone, Christoph Klein, Tom Foulsham, D. Seernani, K. Damania, N. Penkalla, Nikolaos Smyrnis, Stephan Bender, Holger Hill, Alan Kingstone, Nicola C. Anderson, and Ulrich W. Ebner-Priemer
- Subjects
Male ,medicine.medical_specialty ,Adolescent ,Autism Spectrum Disorder ,Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) ,Intra-subject variability (ISV) ,Dissociative Disorders ,Audiology ,behavioral disciplines and activities ,03 medical and health sciences ,Typically developing ,0302 clinical medicine ,mental disorders ,Developmental and Educational Psychology ,medicine ,Child and adolescent psychiatry ,Humans ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,Adhd symptoms ,ddc:796 ,Child ,Visual search ,05 social sciences ,Original Contribution ,General Medicine ,medicine.disease ,Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) ,Psychiatry and Mental health ,Local processing ,Athletic & outdoor sports & games ,Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity ,Autism spectrum disorder ,Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health ,Female ,Psychology ,030217 neurology & neurosurgery ,050104 developmental & child psychology - Abstract
Recent debates in the literature discuss commonalities between Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) at multiple levels of putative causal networks. This debate requires systematic comparisons between these disorders that have been studied in isolation in the past, employing potential markers of each disorder to be investigated in tandem. The present study, choose superior local processing, typical to ASD, and increased Intra-Subject Variability (ISV), typical to ADHD, for a head-to-head comparison of the two disorders, while also considering the comorbid cases. It directly examined groups of participants aged 10–13 years with ADHD, ASD with (ASD+) or without (ASD−) comorbid ADHD and a typically developing (TD) group (total N = 85). A visual search task consisting of an array of paired words was designed. The participants needed to find the specific pair of words, where the first word in the pair was the cue word. This visual search task was selected to compare these groups on overall search performance and trial-to-trial variability of search performance (i.e., ISV). Additionally, scanpath analysis was also carried out using Recurrence Quantification Analysis (RQA) and the Multi-Match Model. Results show that only the ASD− group exhibited superior search performance; whereas, only the groups with ADHD symptoms showed increased ISV. These findings point towards a double dissociation between ASD and ADHD, and argue against an overlap between ASD and ADHD.
- Published
- 2021