Brief Report: Differences in Naturalistic Attention to Real-World Scenes in Adolescents with 16p.11.2 Deletion.

Researchers used virtual reality to study how teenagers with a specific genetic change (16p11.2 deletion) look at real-world scenes. They found these teens paid more attention to bright, flashy parts of scenes rather than meaningful content like faces or important objects. This suggests their brains process visual information differently, focusing more on what 'pops out' visually rather than what's actually important in the scene.

This study examined visual attention patterns in adolescents with 16p11.2 deletion, a genetic variant linked to autism. Using virtual reality headsets, 44 participants explored 360-degree real-world scenes while researchers tracked their eye movements. The study analyzed how participants balanced bottom-up attention (driven by visually salient features like bright colors or movement) versus top-down attention (driven by meaningful content like faces or objects). Results showed that individuals with 16p11.2 deletion relied more heavily on bottom-up visual salience and less on semantic meaning when directing their attention, compared to typically developing controls.

This suggests altered attentional processing in this genetic subgroup.

Findings suggest individuals with 16p11.2 deletion may benefit from interventions that strengthen top-down attention skills and semantic processing. Visual supports and environmental modifications that reduce competing visual distractions could be particularly helpful for this genetic subgroup.

Small sample size (N=44), single genetic subgroup limiting generalizability to broader autism population, virtual reality environment may not fully reflect real-world attention patterns, cross-sectional design prevents understanding of developmental changes.

Sensory differences are nearly universal in autism, but their genetic origins are poorly understood. Here, we tested how individuals with an autism-linked genotype, 16p.11.2 deletion ("16p"), attend to visual information in immersive, real-world photospheres. We monitored participants' (N = 44) gaze while they actively explored 360° scenes via headmounted virtual reality. We modeled the visually salient and semantically meaningful information in scenes and quantified the relative bottom-up vs. top-down influences on attentional deployment.

We found, when compared to typically developed control (TD) participants, 16p participants' attention was less dominantly predicted by semantically meaningful scene regions, relative to visually salient regions. These results suggest that a reduction in top-down relative to bottom-up attention characterizes how individuals with 16p.11.2 deletions engage with naturalistic visual environments.