Table1_Inefficient and unique processing of social–emotional interference in school-aged children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder.docx

IntroductionInterest is growing in investigating the ability of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to process social information under conflicting and complex environments. However, few studies have employed objective behavioral measures to directly explore the underlying profile of social–emotional interference control.MethodsIn the current study, 53 children with ASD and 53 typically developing (TD) control, aged 6–12 years, completed a set of modified flanker tasks involving arrows, schematic faces, same real faces (with facial interference by the same person), and different real faces (with facial interference by different people), respectively. Response time in incongruent (RTInc) and congruent conditions (RTCon), percentage of errors in incongruent (%ErrorInc) and congruent conditions (%ErrorCon), and flanker effect calculated by ΔRT = (RTInc − RTCon)/RTCon and Δ%Error = %ErrorInc − %ErrorCon were used as outcome metrics.ResultsWe obtained three major results: (1) the ASD group had longer RTInc and RTCon compared to the TD group in the arrow, schematic face, and same real-face tasks; (2) compared with the performance in the arrow flanker task, both groups exhibited longer RTs and reduced ΔRTs in the same real-face task; however, in the schematic-face task, longer RT and reduced ΔRT were exhibited in the TD group, but not in the ASD group; and (3) in the different real-face task, ASD group had higher %Error than the TD group, and %Error was negatively correlated with RT only in the ASD group.ConclusionThe current study delineates the inefficient processing of social–emotional interference in school-aged children with ASD and further suggests that these children might adopt a relatively optimized strategy like symbolization when dealing with emotional conflict. However, such compensatory cognitive strategies may be exhausted along with the increase in information load. These findings provide new perspectives of considering the difference more than difficulty in the cognitive profile of ASD, which will benefit the development of targeted behavioral interventions.

本研究的导言指出，对于孤独症谱系障碍（ASD）儿童在冲突和复杂环境中处理社会信息能力的研究兴趣日益增长。然而，为数不多的研究采用了客观的行为测量方法，以直接探索社会-情绪干扰控制的潜在特征。研究方法中，53名患有ASD的儿童和53名发育正常的（TD）对照组，年龄在6至12岁之间，完成了一系列修改后的 flanker任务，包括箭头、示意图面孔、相同真实面孔（由同一个人产生的面部干扰）和不同真实面孔（由不同人产生的面部干扰）分别。在冲突（RTInc）和非冲突条件（RTCon）下的反应时间、在冲突和非冲突条件下的错误百分比（%ErrorInc和%ErrorCon），以及通过ΔRT = (RTInc − RTCon)/RTCon和Δ%Error = %ErrorInc − %ErrorCon计算出的flanker效应，被用作结果指标。研究结果包括三个方面：（1）与TD组相比，ASD组在箭头、示意图面孔和相同真实面孔任务中的RTInc和RTCon更长；（2）与箭头flanker任务的表现相比，两组在相同真实面孔任务中表现出更长的RT和减少的ΔRT，但在示意图面孔任务中，只有TD组表现出更长的RT和减少的ΔRT，而ASD组没有；（3）在不同真实面孔任务中，ASD组的%Error高于TD组，且仅在ASD组中，%Error与RT呈负相关。结论部分，本研究描绘了学龄期ASD儿童在社会-情绪干扰处理上的低效性，并进一步提出，这些儿童在处理情绪冲突时可能采取相对优化的策略，如象征化。然而，这种补偿性认知策略可能会随着信息负载的增加而耗尽。这些发现为考虑ASD认知特征中的差异而非困难提供了新的视角，这将有助于针对性行为干预措施的发展。