By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on August 1, 2013
Treatment, even the definition, of autism spectrum disorders remains a challenge for health care professionals.
Classically, autism is a marked by several fundamental features impairments in social functioning, difficulty communicating, and a restriction of interests.
Despite significant research efforts, experts have been unable to pinpoint the underlying causes that might account for all three of these characteristics.
A new study adds to the complexity as investigators determine two key attentional abilities moving attention fluidly and orienting to social information do not account for the diversity of symptoms foundin people with autism.
This is not to say that every aspect of attention is fine in all children with autism children with autism very often have attentional disorders as well, said psychological scientists and lead researchers Drs. Jason Fischer and Kami Koldewyn of MIT.
However, our study suggests that attention impairments are not a key component of autism itself.
The study is published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Attention has long been targeted as a possible causal mechanism in autism research.
Problems with attention early in life could have far-reaching consequences, said Fischer and Koldewyn. For example, if young children with autism dont pay close attention to the behaviors of the people around them, they might never learn to read body language and other social cues.
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Study Finds Attention Problems Not At Issue in Autism