Browsing by Author "Francis, Alexander L."

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    Auditory Attentional Disengagement in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
    (Springer, 2019-06-14) Keehn, Brandon; Kadlaskar, Girija; McNally Keehn, Rebecca; Francis, Alexander L.; Pediatrics, School of Medicine
    Despite early differences in orienting to sounds, no study to date has investigated whether children with ASD demonstrate impairments in attentional disengagement in the auditory modality. Twenty-one nine- to fifteen year old children with ASD and 20 age- and IQ-matched TD children were presented with an auditory gap-overlap paradigm. Evidence of impaired disengagement in ASD was mixed. Differences in saccadic reaction time for overlap and gap conditions did not differ between groups. However, children with ASD did show increased no-shift trials in the overlap condition, as well as reduced disengagement efficiency compared to their TD peers. These results provide further support for disengagement impairments in ASD, and suggest that these deficits include disengaging from and shifting to unimodal auditory information.
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    Brief Report: Reduced Heart Rate Variability in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
    (SpringerLink, 2020-11) Lory, Catharine; Kadlaskar, Girija; McNally Keehn, Rebecca; Francis, Alexander L.; Keehn, Brandon; Pediatrics, School of Medicine
    Dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), which can be indexed by heart rate variability (HRV), has been posited to contribute to core features of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, the relationship between ASD and HRV remains uncertain. We assessed tonic and phasic HRV of 21 children with ASD and 21 age- and IQ-matched typically developing (TD) children and examined (1) group differences in HRV and (2) associations between HRV and ASD symptomatology. Children with ASD showed significantly lower tonic HRV, but similar phasic HRV compared to TD children. Additionally, reduced tonic HRV was associated with atypical attentional responsivity in ASD. Our findings suggest ANS dysregulation is present in ASD and may contribute to atypical attentional responses to sensory stimulation.