Exploration on the relation between the sociality and the cognitive function-A research for social skill support in children with autism spectrum disorder-

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 23730870
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Special needs education
• Research Institution: Hamamatsu University School of Medicine (2014); University of Toyama (2011-2013)
• Principal Investigator: MASATOSHI Katagiri 浜松医科大学, 子どものこころの発達研究センター, 特任助教 (00549503)
• Project Period (FY): 2011-04-28 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 自閉症スペクトラム障害 / 注意の切り替え / 注意の開放 / クロスモーダル処理 / 多感覚統合

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Evidence suggests that individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) exhibit difficulty in integrating crossmodal information. The present study investigates whether children with ASD have difficulty in crossmodal processing across auditory and visual modalities.We observed 10 children with ASD and 11 IQ-, age-, and gender-matched, healthy, control children. In the visual-only gap/overlap task, children with ASD exhibited the same performance as control children. In contrast, in the audio-visual condition, children with ASD were significantly slower to respond than control children in both the gap and overlap tasks. In addition, the gap effects between the ASD and control groups were observed in each condition, but no significant group differences were observed. These results suggest that children with ASD exhibit difficulty in simultaneously allocating attentional resources to auditory and visual modalities although children with ASD are intact in disengagement of attention.

Free Research Field

特別支援教育、臨床発達心理学、認知神経科学