Context sensitivity in action decreases along the autism spectrum: a predictive processing perspective

Abstract

Recent predictive processing accounts of perception and action point towards a key challenge for the nervous system in dynamically optimizing the balance between incoming sensory information and existing expectations regarding the state of the environment. Here, we report differences in the influence of the preceding sensory context on motor function, varying with respect to both clinical and subclinical features of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Reach-to-grasp movements were recorded subsequent to an inactive period in which illusory ownership of a prosthetic limb was induced. We analysed the sub-components of reach trajectories derived using a minimum-jerk fitting procedure. Non-clinical adults low in autistic features showed disrupted movement execution following the illusion compared to a control condition. By contrast, individuals higher in autistic features (both those with ASD and non-clinical individuals high in autistic traits) showed reduced sensitivity to the presence of the illusion in their reaching movements while still exhibiting the typical perceptual effects of the illusion. Clinical individuals were distinct from non-clinical individuals scoring high in autistic features, however, in the early stages of movement. These results suggest that the influence of high-level representations of the environment differs between individuals, contributing to clinical and subclinical differences in motor performance that manifest in a contextual manner. As high-level representations of context help to explain fluctuations in sensory input over relatively longer time scales, more circumscribed sensitivity to prior or contextual information in autistic sensory processing could contribute more generally to reduced social comprehension, sensory impairments and a stronger desire for predictability and routine.

Salivary Oxytocin Concentration Associates with the Subjective Feeling of Body Ownership during the Rubber Hand Illusion

“…We also found that participants with high autistic traits tended to feel weak body ownership in the RHI. The result was partly consistent with previous studies reporting that individuals with ASD have disturbances in body representations (Cascio et al, 2012a; Paton et al, 2012; Palmer et al, 2015). Previous studies investigating motor learning (Haswell et al, 2009) and tactile temporal order judgment (Wada et al, 2014) suggested that the disturbances of body representations reported in individuals with ASD are explainable by a strong weight on proprioception.…”

“…Moreover, the jerk in a reach-to-grasp movement subsequent to the induction of the RHI was significantly increased in neurotypical individuals. However, this movement was not affected by the RHI in individuals with ASD (Palmer et al, 2015). Although it should be kept in mind that proprioceptive drift is not always accompanied with illusory ownership during the RHI (Holle et al, 2011), previous studies have indicated that disturbances of body representations, which are symptoms of ASD, affect the induction of plastic changes related to body ownership.…”

Associations Between Interoceptive Cognition and Age in Autism Spectrum Disorder and Typical Development

“…A better understanding of sensory experiences in this domain has the potential to inform several current models of ASD. For example, many researchers have suggested that violations of predictive coding may underlie ASD symptomatology (Palmer, Paton, Kirkovski, Enticott, & Hohwy, 2015; Palmer, Seth, & Hohwy, 2015; Van Boxtel & Lu, 2013). This theory suggests that individuals with ASD have difficulty using prior sensory experience to form the basis for accurate predictions of future sensory events in the external world.…”

Disentangling signal and noise in autism spectrum disorder

“…In many of the recent proposals for ASD, deficient precision estimation is assumed to be key (Lawson et al, 2014;Palmer, Paton, Kirkovski, Enticott, & Hohwy, 2015;Pellicano & Burr, 2012;Van de Cruys, de-Wit, Evers, Boets, & Wagemans, 2013;Van de Cruys et al, 2014). Our own account, termed ''HIPPEA" (for High, Inflexible Precision of Prediction Errors in Autism), assumes that bottomup prediction errors are assigned a precision that is too high and not adapted (inflexible) to the uncertainty in the context (Van de Cruys et al, 2014).…”