AUTISTIC TRAITS MODULATE SOCIALLY DRIVEN ATTENTIONAL ORIENTING: EVIDENCE FROM N2PC IN VIRTUAL REALITY

Autistic traits represent a broad spectrum of characteristics observed in both neurotypical individuals and those with autism spectrum disorder. Although previous research has shown that individuals with high autistic traits experience difficulties in responding to social cues, it remains unclear how their attentional orienting is influenced by the sociality of the surrounding context. In this study, participants were classified into high and low autistic trait groups based on Autism Spectrum Quotient (ASQ) scores. They completed a cueing and visual search task in a virtual reality (VR) setting, using a 2 × 2 factorial design that manipulated the sociality of the cue (avatar vs. stick) and context (social vs. nonsocial). The analysis focused on the N2pc component, a well-established event-related potential index of lateralized selective attention. Results revealed a significant three-way interaction among group, cue, and context. Individuals with low ASQ exhibited an N2pc component when an avatar served as a cue in a nonsocial context or when a stick served as a cue in a social context, with attenuated amplitudes in conditions in which social information was either redundant or absent. In contrast, participants with high ASQ showed generally attenuated N2pc responses across all conditions. These findings suggest that while individuals with lower autistic traits flexibly orient attention according to cue–context relationships, those with higher autistic traits show reduced neural sensitivity to socially driven attentional allocation. This study provides novel insights into how autistic traits modulate attentional processes as a function of cue and contextual sociality in VR.