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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

social threat, autism spectrum disorders, ASD, social interaction

College

Family, Home, and Social Sciences

Department

Psychology

Abstract

The purpose of this research project was to investigate underlying difficulties with social interaction in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Previous research has demonstrated that children with ASD are inhibited in processing social cues, including social threat (Krysko & Rutherford, 2009). We hypothesized that children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) would demonstrate decreased reaction times and error rates relative to typically-developing children when viewing social threat-related stimuli. We also hypothesized that, when viewing non-social threat-related stimuli with no social context, children with ASD would display intact performance relative to typically developing children. We tested these hypotheses through comparing the response times and error rates from a computerized dot probe task with social and non-social threatening stimuli.

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