Atypicalities in Perceptual Adaptation in Autism Do Not Extend to Perceptual Causality

Abstract

A recent study showed that adaptation to causal events (collisions) in adults caused subsequent events to be less likely perceived as causal. In this study, we examined if a similar negative adaptation effect for perceptual causality occurs in children, both typically developing and with autism. Previous studies have reported diminished adaptation for face identity, facial configuration and gaze direction in children with autism. To test whether diminished adaptive coding extends beyond high-level social stimuli (such as faces) and could be a general property of autistic perception, we developed a child-friendly paradigm for adaptation of perceptual causality. We compared the performance of 22 children with autism with 22 typically developing children, individually matched on age and ability (IQ scores). We found significant and equally robust adaptation aftereffects for perceptual causality in both groups. There were also no differences between the two groups in their attention, as revealed by reaction times and accuracy in a change-detection task. These findings suggest that adaptation to perceptual causality in autism is largely similar to typical development and, further, that diminished adaptive coding might not be a general characteristic of autism at low levels of the perceptual hierarchy, constraining existing theories of adaptation in autism.

Visual Motion Prediction and Verbal False Memory Performance in Autistic Children

“…This suggestion appears to fit well with the hierarchical quality of the predictive coding framework, which could potentially explain why some types of prediction are more difficult for autistic individuals than others. This notion also echoes recent work into atypical adaptive mechanisms in autism, which suggest that adaptation to “low‐level” stimuli, like perceptual causality and color, may be intact in autism [Maule, Stanworth, Pellicano, & Franklin, ; Karaminis et al, ], whereas reduced adaptation is found for more “high‐level” stimuli, such as faces and numerosity [Pellicano et al, ; Turi et al, ]. We note that previous studies have often focused on hypotheses arising from predictive coding and Bayesian accounts [e.g., Lawson et al, ; Sevgi et al, ] rather than testing prediction abilities directly.…”

Children with autism spectrum disorder show reduced adaptation to number

“…It is unclear why other lower-level functions that have been tested, such as simple and complex motion tasks, do not show reduced adaptation (24). Adaptation effects occur at multiple levels of visual processing, from photoreceptors to complex perceptual systems, but the mechanisms may be quite distinct.…”

“…For example, preliminary measurements in our laboratory suggest that the motion aftereffect, one of the most robust and most studied forms of perceptual adaptation, is as strong in autistic children as in age-and ability-matched typical children. Autistic children also showed the same amount of adaptation (24) to a more complex combination of moving stimuli, purportedly reflecting perceptual "causality" (25): Two colliding objects can appear to bounce off ("causing" the other to reverse direction) or slide over each another. Adapting to an unambiguous bounce biases observers in favor of the sliding interpretation.…”

Adaptation to the Speed of Biological Motion in Autism

“…Turning to the processing of non-social stimuli, autistic children have been found to present attenuated adaptation to numerosity (Turi et al 2015) and, in the auditory domain, autistic adults have been found to present attenuated adaptation to loudness (Lawson et al 2015) and audiovisual integration (Turi et al 2016). Three studies, however, have failed to find evidence of atypical adaptive-coding abilities, including Cook et al (2014), who reported intact adaptation to facial expression and identity in autistic adults, Karaminis et al (2015), who found that autistic and typical children did not differ in the degree of adaptation of perceptual causality, and Maule et al (2018), who found that autistic and typical adults did not differ in the degree of adaptation to colour.…”