Attention to faces in Williams syndrome

Riby, Deborah and Jones, Nicola and Brown, Philippa and Robinson, Lucy and Langton, Stephen and Bruce, Vicky and Riby, Leigh (2011) Attention to faces in Williams syndrome. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 41. pp. 1228-1239. ISSN 0162-3257

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Abstract

Williams syndrome (WS) is associated with distinct social behaviours. One component of the WS social phenotype is atypically prolonged face fixation. This behaviour co-exists with attention difficulties. Attention is multi-faceted and may impact on gaze behaviour in several ways. Four experiments assessed (i) attention capture by faces, (ii) interference from facial stimuli, (iii) face bias, and (iv) attention disengagement. Individuals with WS were compared to typically developing participants of comparable nonverbal ability and chronological age. The first three experiments revealed no atypicality of attention to faces in WS. However, in experiment 4 there was a suggestion that individuals with WS (compared to those developing typically) found it much more time consuming to disengage from faces than objects. The results are discussed in terms of attention abnormalities and possible face disengagement difficulties in WS.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information and Comments:	The final publication is available at link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-010-1141-5
Keywords:	Williams syndrome, Social attention, Face perception, Autism
Faculty / Department:	Faculty of Human and Digital Sciences > School of Psychology
Depositing User:	Pauline Bray
Date Deposited:	23 Feb 2016 09:24
Last Modified:	26 Feb 2016 15:38
URI:	https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/772

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