Autism-spectrum traits in neurotypicals predict the embodiment of manipulation knowledge about object concepts: Evidence from eyetracking

Abstract

Sensorimotor-based theories of cognition predict that even subtle developmental motor differences, such as those characterizing autism spectrum disorder (ASD), impact how we represent the meaning of manipulable objects (e.g., faucet). Here, we test 85 neurotypical participants, who varied widely on the Adult Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ), a measure intended to capture variability in ASD characteristics in the general adult population (participant scores were all below the clinical threshold for autism). Participants completed a visual world eyetracking task designed to assess the activation of conceptual representations of manipulable objects. Participants heard words referring to manually manipulable objects (e.g., faucet) while we recorded their eye movements to arrays of four objects: the named object, a related object typically manipulated similarly (e.g., jar), and two unrelated objects. Consistent with prior work, we observed more looks to the related object than to the unrelated ones (i.e., a manipulation-relatedness effect). This effect likely reflects the overlapping conceptual representations of objects sharing manipulation characteristics (e.g., faucet and jar), due to embodied sensorimotor properties being part of their representations. Critically, we observed—among typically developed young adults—that as AQ scores increased, manipulation-relatedness effects decreased. In contrast, in a visual control condition, in which a target object was paired with related objects of a similar shape (e.g., snake and rope), relatedness effects increased with AQ scores. The results show that AQ scores can predict variation in how object-concept representations are activated for typically developed individuals. More speculatively, they are consistent with the hypothesis that in individuals with ASD, differences in object-concept representations emerge at least in part via differences in sensorimotor experience.

The relevance of familiarity in the context of self-related information processing

“…It should however be noted that this is consistent with distributions reported in earlier studies in neurotypicals (Abu-Akel et al, 2019;Amodeo et al, 2021;Ingersoll et al, 2011). Furthermore, the descriptive statistics for both measures-displayed in Table 3-were also in line with prior research in neurotypical samples (see, for example, Davis et al, 2022;Goris et al, 2020;Miu et al, 2012;Ruzich et al, 2015). Therefore, correlational analyses were conducted using non-parametric tests (i.e., Kendall's τ b ).…”

Word learning in ASD: the sensorimotor, the perceptual and the symbolic

“…Going forward it will be important to investigate relations between motoric function, priming effects and performance on behavioral language tasks investigating core language mechanisms, such as the shape bias or categorization in populations diagnosed with autism. Future research should also establish to what extent an embodied cognition-inspired account, which assumes an affordance impairment (Davis et al, 2022;Eigsti, 2013) can go beyond concepts arising in the context of manipulable objects, and explain abstract concepts, such justice, thought and the like. It has been suggested, for instance, that abstract concepts might be acquired in a way similar to concrete ones via a process of metaphor activation (Dijkstra et al, 2014).…”

“…These motor deficits have been linked to differences in acquiring and using conceptual knowledge (Eigsti, 2013;Moseley & Pulvermuller, 2018). Davis et al, (2022) explain that the sensorimotor experience, such as manipulating objects, so vital for early conceptual knowledge in typical development (Gibson, 1977;Pexman, 2019), may be detached and uncoupled from such concept formation in autism. This would have direct effects on how motoric features of concepts are embodied, and disrupt the categorical formation that typically arises from repeated simulations of schematic representations of perceptual elements (Barsalou, 1999(Barsalou, , 2008.…”

“…This would have direct effects on how motoric features of concepts are embodied, and disrupt the categorical formation that typically arises from repeated simulations of schematic representations of perceptual elements (Barsalou, 1999(Barsalou, , 2008. Evidence for this comes from an eye tracking paradigm (Davis et al, 2022) in which autistic traits measured by the Autism Quotient in a typical adult population related to object-concept representation. Individuals with higher autistic traits were less likely to look at a semantically related distractor that activated an overlapping concept (e.g., faucet when they heard the word jar, which can be physically manipulated in a similar manner).…”