Effects of Autistic Trait-Related Joint Attention on Visual Working Memory

Abstract Background: Social attention deficits have been found in individuals with high autistic traits in the non-clinical population However, the eye movement patterns triggered by gaze direction still need to be explored in individuals with different levels of autistic traits, and it remains unknown whether autistic traits can modulate the relationship between joint attention and visual working memory. The aims of this study were to investigate the effect of autistic traits on joint attention and whether autistic traits could further influence visual working memory performance through joint attention. Methods: A total of 46 participants who scored in the top and bottom 20% on the Chinese version of the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) were divided into high- and low-AQ groups. We used a combination of the cueing paradigm, change detection task, and eye-tracking technique to explore behavioral performance and eye movement patterns. The 50% validity gaze and dot cues were set as social and nonsocial cues, respectively. Results: The low-AQ group showed shorter reaction times for the gaze-cued location but not for the dot condition and not for the high-AQ group. The low-AQ group had a higher fixation proportion, more fixation counts both in the gaze-cued and dot-cued locations, and shorter entry time into the target ROI under the valid gaze condition. The high-AQ group only showed a dot cueing effect with a higher fixation proportion and more fixation counts in dot-cued location.Limitations: The small number of memory items may have led participants to encode polygons into long-term memory, which limits the only interpretation of results on visual working memory. In addition, participants in this study were all undergraduates or graduate students, which may limit the generalizability of our findings to a broader population.Conclusions: This finding suggest that autistic traits influence the pattern of attention triggered by gaze and dot cues. Individuals with low-AQ were more adept at using gaze cues to direct attention, while high-AQ individuals were less sensitive to gaze cues and preferred non-social cues. The difference in joint attention further affected the speed of visual working memory.