2.7 Quality Control
Of 334 participants processed (n=176 TD, n=158 ASD), 61 participants
(18.2%) were excluded for issues with data quality. 42 of these
participants (a total of 12.5% of the original 334: n=16 TD, n=26 ASD)
were excluded due to > 50% of trials rejected based on
automatic artifact rejection procedures described above. 15 participants
(4.5% of the original 334: n=3 TD, n=12 ASD) were flagged due to
patterns of button pressing indicating issues with task understanding or
compliance. These included (1) two or more times as many button presses
as stimuli, indicating excessive pressing, (2) fewer than half the
number of button presses as stimuli, indicating inattention, or (3)
greater than 50% of trials contaminated by atypical behavioral
performance including anticipatory button presses (pressing <
150 ms after cue onset) and late button presses (pressing >
1 second after cue onset). For trials in which participants erroneously
responded with more than one press, data were epoched to the first
response, and only the first response was analyzed. Four participants
(n=0 TD, n=4 ASD) were flagged for both excessive trial rejection and
poor response profiles. From the remaining 273 participants, a subset of
168 age, sex, and IQ-matched participants were chosen for further
analysis based on their demographic characteristics.