Selective attention in autistic and mentally retarded persons: Effects of visual cues and distractors on task performance

The goal of this study was to examine selective attention and distractibility within the visual modality in autistic and mentally retarded persons. Selective attention was defined as the individual's ability to identify and respond to a target stimulus, while distractibility was considered to be the extent to which the individual's performance on a given task is interfered with by extraneous stimuli in the visual field. In the present study, performances of MA-matched groups of autistic, nonautistic organically retarded, nonautistic familial retarded, and nonhandicapped persons were compared on a forced-choice reaction time task. Conditions varied with regard to number and location of distractors and the presence or absence of a boundary cue.; Participants included 12 autistic, 32 nonautistic organically retarded, 30 nonautistic familial retarded, and 34 nonhandicapped persons. The primary findings of this study revealed that the performance of autistic subjects was most adversely affected by the presence of distractors, indicating that autistic persons suffer from selective attention deficits and increased distractibility. In general, there was considerable evidence to indicate that the behavior of autistic persons is distractor-controlled. Increased distractibility was also observed in organically retarded persons, although to a lesser extent than in autistic individuals. Other findings of interest indicated that autistic and organically retarded subjects displayed slower reaction times than did familial retarded and nonhandicapped persons. In addition, the autistic group was the only one to show improvement in reaction time scores in later sessions.