Brief Report: Reduced Grouping Interference in Children with ASD: Evidence from a Multiple Object Tracking Task

Abstract

This study was inspired by the more locally oriented processing style in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). A modified multiple object tracking (MOT) task was administered to a group of children with and without ASD. Participants not only had to distinguish moving targets from distracters, but they also had to track targets when they were visually grouped to distracters, a manipulation which has a detrimental effect on tracking performance in adults. MOT performance in the ASD group was also affected by grouping, but this effect was significantly reduced. This result highlights how the reduced bias towards more global processing in ASD could influence further stages of cognition by altering the way in which attention selects information for further processing.

Multiple Object Tracking Reveals Object-Based Grouping Interference in Children with ASD

“…Similar to Evers et al (2014), three average scores (one per condition) and one overall interference score were computed for each participant. The average scores refer to the average number of correctly identified targets (possible range 0-4) across trials within a particular condition.…”

“…Previously, Scholl et al (2001) have found stronger detrimental effect for object-based grouping than for connection-based grouping, and Evers et al (2014) have found diminished grouping interference for connection-based grouping in children with ASD. Therefore, we predicted a large differential effect of grouping interference, i.e., stronger grouping interference in TD children than was shown for connection-based grouping (in line with Scholl et al), and subtle grouping interference for children with ASD (in line with Evers et al).…”

“…The third study was conducted by Evers et al (2014), who investigated the extent to which connection-based grouping affected the allocation of attention and co-occurring tracking ability in children and without ASD (6-10 years old). Their study was inspired by earlier work of Scholl et al (2001) on the detrimental effects of target grouping in TD adults.…”

“…The grouping interference research by Scholl et al (2001) and Evers et al (2014) shows how one can modify the MOT paradigm to investigate how visual information is automatically and spontaneously organized by the viewer and how individual differences in how information is being captured by attention, can affect task performance. Scholl et al (2001) not only looked at connectionbased grouping, which had inspired the study by Evers et al (2014), but also looked at other types of grouping, such as object-based grouping.…”

“…Scholl et al (2001) not only looked at connectionbased grouping, which had inspired the study by Evers et al (2014), but also looked at other types of grouping, such as object-based grouping. 1 They did this by altering the tracking displays in various ways so that target and distractor appeared to be distinct parts of the same integral object, rather than merely two items being connected to each other (see Fig.…”