Autism: Hard to Switch from Details to the Whole

Abstract

It has long been proposed that individuals with autism exhibit a superior processing of details at the expense of an impaired global processing. This theory has received some empirical support, but results are mixed. In this research we have studied local and global processing in ASD and Typically Developing children, with an adaptation of the Navon task, designed to measure congruency effects between local and global stimuli and switching cost between local and global tasks. ASD children showed preserved global processing; however, compared to Typically Developing children, they exhibited more facilitation from congruent local stimuli when they performed the global task. In addition, children with ASD had more switching cost than Typically Developing children only when they switched from the local to the global task, reflecting a specific difficulty to disengage from local stimuli. Together, results suggest that ASD is characterized by a tendency to process local details, they benefit from the processing of local stimuli at the expense of increasing cost to disengage from local stimuli when global processing is needed. Thus, this work demonstrates experimentally the advantages and disadvantages of the increased local processing in children with ASD.

How Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, Developmental Language Disorder, and Typical Language Learn to Produce Global and Local Semantic Features

“…Performance consistent with the weak central coherence hypothesis has been observed in individuals with ASD on verbal [18,24,25,[46][47][48], as well as non-verbal [49][50][51][52][53][54] tasks. In fact, some have suggested that this local bias is a core component of the ASD phenotype [55,56].…”

“…In summary, weak central coherence might be a differentiating characteristic between children with ASD and those with DLD. To capture these global-local processing differences, previous studies have primarily employed standardized assessments [30,49,53], magnetic resonance imaging [51,60], switching tasks [54], and scripted sentences or stories followed by a forced choice set of answers [31,32], none of which use the open-ended approach recommended by Happé [22] to best evoke differences in global-local processing. Unlike a labeling, forced choice, or recognition task, open-ended production tasks require the participant to formulate his or her own answers.…”

“…In hindsight, this should not have been surprising. Traditionally, evidence in support of the weak central coherence hypothesis has focused on visuo-spatial tasks [49][50][51]54], whereas evidence in the linguistic domain has been varied [31,32]. Previous researchers have shown that verbal children with ASD can establish semantic categories for words at the basic and superordinate levels as well as their typical peers [96], recognize typical members of familiar word-object categories [92], and can extend word label categories broadly [95], all tasks that would require them to process word referents at the global level.…”

Impact of mask use on face recognition: an eye-tracking study

“…More specifically, the ability to adjust eye movement strategies according to mask conditions during face recognition may require good cognitive flexibility to switch between perceptuomotor and visual routine memories, and good problem-solving skills to develop new visual routines when there is a mismatch between information available for memory encoding and retrieval. Thus, it may be particularly challenging to young children, whose cognitive flexibility and problem-solving skills are still developing (e.g., Peng et al, 2018 ); older adults, whose cognitive abilities may have declined (e.g., Giller & Beste, 2019 ); and individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), who are typically characterized by low cognitive flexibility (e.g., English et al, 2017 ; Fujino et al, 2019 ; Soriano et al, 2018 ). Explicit instructions on strategies that may benefit recognition performance, such as adjusting to a more eyes-focused eye movement pattern when recognizing an unmasked face that was learned with a mask on, may help these vulnerable individuals adapt better.…”

An Empirical Study on the Adaptation and Automation of a Cancellation Test for Children

“…Research studies suggest that the strategies of visual exploration from individuals with ASD are different from normotypic individuals in terms of population. For example, the Central Coherence Theory (CCT) proposes that individuals with ASD tend to explore the visual scene initially by focusing on parts of the whole, different from normotypic individuals, which use a holistic strategy [20]. These peculiar characteristics of visual processing associated with the relative privilege of global/local strategies can be revealed in cancellation tests.…”