A new virtual environment paradigm for high functioning autism intended to help attentional disengagement in a social context Bridging the gap between relevance theory and executive dysfunction

This article presents a review of the question regarding the link between social communication difficulties and altered executive functions (which are cognitive functions involved in the control of behavior, such as planning, inhibition, working memory etc) in high functioning autism. We first analyze the difficulties experienced by people with high functioning autism in processing contextual cues during social conversations. We extend this approach to a broader scope including verbal and non-verbal communication. Indeed, understanding social interactions requires integrating and connecting transient multimodal social cues. The article then focuses on the alterations reported in high functioning autism concerning the ability to process facial expressions during an ongoing conversation. This ability involves attentional resources that are discussed in light of the executive dysfunction attributed to autism. On this basis, we hypothesize that the difficulties in appreciating the synergy between facial expressions and speech could be linked to impairments in shifting attention from one to the other. A new experimental paradigm designed for testing this hypothesis is presented. It relies on a virtual environment system based on eye-tracking technology enabling users to control the visual display via their gaze. The intent behind this apparatus is to compensate for the deficits in shifting attention attributed to autism. We finally describe the procedure devised for testing this new virtual environment paradigm and conclude on its potential therapeutic use.