Atypical sensory perception is one of the most ubiquitous symptoms of autism, including a tendency towards a local-processing bias. We investigated whether local-processing biases were associated with global-processing impairments on a global/local attentional-scope paradigm in conjunction with a composite-face task. Behavioural results were related to individuals' levels of autistic traits, specifically the Attention to Detail subscale of the Autism Quotient, and the Sensory Profile Questionnaire. Individuals showing high rates of Attention to Detail were more susceptible to global attentional-scope manipulations, suggesting that local-processing biases associated with Attention to Detail do not come at the cost of a global-processing deficit, but reflect a difference in default global versus local bias. This relationship operated at the attentional/perceptual level, but not response criterion.
Face processing in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is thought to be atypical, but it is unclear whether differences in visual conjunctive processing are specific to faces. To address this, we adapted a previously established eye-tracking paradigm which modulates the need for conjunctive processing by varying the degree of feature ambiguity in faces and objects. Typically-developed (TD) participants showed a canonical pattern of conjunctive processing: High-ambiguity objects were processed more conjunctively than low-ambiguity objects, and faces were processed in an equally conjunctive manner regardless of ambiguity level. In contrast, autistic individuals did not show differences in conjunctive processing based on stimulus category, providing evidence that atypical visual conjunctive processing in ASD is the result of a domain general lack of perceptual specialization.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.