EEG Insights into Visual Attention and Affective Prosody Processing in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Examining the Theta/Alpha Ratio.

Attention is a fundamental cognitive process, and individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often experience challenges in both cognitive and emotional regulation. Although multiple object tracking (MOT) tasks are frequently used to assess attention impairments in ASD, most studies focus solely on behavioral responses and overlook physiological measures such as electroencephalogram (EEG). Moreover, the interaction between cognition and emotion during MOT tasks remains underexplored. This study addresses these gaps by examining cognitive load variations using the Theta/Alpha Ratio (TAR) in 31 ASD and 31 typically developing (TD) children, based on publicly available EEG data. Participants completed three tasks: neutral image viewing (IPAS), one-target 4-disc (MOT4), and one-target 8-disc (MOT8), representing low, intermediate, and high attentional loads, respectively, while listening to happiness and sadness prosodies. For each participant, TAR was calculated, and five EEG features were extracted: averaged TAR across all channels (allTAR) and TAR values from the frontal (fTAR), temporal (tTAR), parietal (pTAR), and central (cTAR) regions. A three-factor ANOVA (emotion types × attention levels × subject groups) was conducted, followed by post-hoc t-tests for multiple comparisons, and correlation analyses were performed between the five EEG features and clinical measures. Results revealed: (1) a significant interaction between attention level and emotional prosody for tTAR; (2) significant main effects of attention level in fTAR and cTAR, but no interaction with emotional prosody; (3) higher allTAR, fTAR, tTAR, cTAR, and pTAR in the ASD group compared to TD; and (4) stronger EEG clinical correlations in the ASD group during MOT-4. These findings confirm visual attention deficits and highlight the interplay between emotion and cognition in ASD, suggesting TAR as a potential biomarker for cognitive load and emotional modulation.