Reduced face identity aftereffects in relatives of children with autism

Fiorentini, Chiara; Gray, Laura; Rhodes, Gillian; Jeffery, Linda; Pellicano, Liz

doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2012.08.019

Cited by 46 publications

(63 citation statements)

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“…Reduced numerosity adaptation in autism is consistent with previous research showing reduced levels of face adaptation (19)(20)(21)(22)(23) and suggests that adaptive mechanisms may be in general atypical in autism, not only for social stimuli, but also for other high-level extractions such as number perception. Although both face and number perception are generally considered to be "high-level" processes, the neural substrates underlying each are quite distinct: Faces are processed through the inferotemporal cortex (35), whereas number involves intraparietal and prefrontal cortex (33, 34)-a different processing stream, thought to have very different functional roles (42).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

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Children with autism spectrum disorder show reduced adaptation to number

Turi

Burr

Igliozzi

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Autism is known to be associated with major perceptual atypicalities. We have recently proposed a general model to account for these atypicalities in Bayesian terms, suggesting that autistic individuals underuse predictive information or priors. We tested this idea by measuring adaptation to numerosity stimuli in children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). After exposure to large numbers of items, stimuli with fewer items appear to be less numerous (and vice versa). We found that children with ASD adapted much less to numerosity than typically developing children, although their precision for numerosity discrimination was similar to that of the typical group. This result reinforces recent findings showing reduced adaptation to facial identity in ASD and goes on to show that reduced adaptation is not unique to faces (social stimuli with special significance in autism), but occurs more generally, for both parietal and temporal functions, probably reflecting inefficiencies in the adaptive interpretation of sensory signals. These results provide strong support for the Bayesian theories of autism.utism is a heritable, lifelong neurodevelopmental condition with striking effects on social communication. The condition, however, is also associated with a range of nonsocial symptoms, including both hypersensitivity and hyposensitivity to perceptual stimuli, and sensory-seeking behaviors such as attraction to light, intense looking at objects, and fascination with brightly colored objects. These sensory atypicalities, which now form part of the diagnostic criteria for autism (1), can have debilitating effects on the lives of autistic people (2) and their families (3).We have recently proposed a Bayesian account of autism (4), suggesting that it is not sensory processing itself that is disrupted in individuals with autism, but the interpretation of the sensory input. The Bayesian class of theories, including predictive coding and other generative models (5-7), assumes that perception is an optimized combination of external sensory data (the likelihood) and an internal model (the prior). We suggested that this process may be atypical in autism, in that the internal priors are underweighted and less used than in typical individuals. Our theory has been followed by several others along similar lines (8-11).The suggestion of underutilization of priors leads to several specific predictions. One strong prediction is that autistic individuals should show reduced adaptation aftereffects. Adaptation, which occurs throughout sensory systems, represents a form of experience-dependent plasticity in which our current sensory experience is intimately affected by how we viewed the world only moments before. It is widely held to pose numerous functional advantages (12-16), including serving to autocalibrate perceptual systems to their environment by dynamically tuning its responses to match the distribution of stimuli to make maximal use of the limited working range of the system (12-16). It achieves this by reducing the transm...

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

“…This has been confirmed by several subsequent studies demonstrating diminished adaptation to faces in children with autism for facial configuration (20), emotion (21), and diminished adaptation to apparent eye-gaze direction (22). Relatives of autistic children also show reduced face adaptation (23).…”

supporting

confidence: 65%

Children with autism spectrum disorder show reduced adaptation to number

Turi

Burr

Igliozzi

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Only the data from the average face were used to measure the strength of identity aftereffects. All the faces used in the current experiment have been validated and used in other identity aftereffect experiments (e.g., Fiorentini et al, 2012;Jeffery et al, 2011;Nishimura et al, 2008;Pellicano et al, 2007;Pimperton et al, 2009). Test stimuli were 5.1 cm (height) by 4.8 cm (width) and subtended a visual angle of 5.9°Â 5.5°when viewed at a distance of 50 cm.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Norm-based coding of facial identity in adults with autism spectrum disorder

et al. 2015

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It is unclear whether reported deficits in face processing in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) can be explained by deficits in perceptual face coding mechanisms. In the current study, we examined whether adults with ASD showed evidence of norm-based opponent coding of facial identity, a perceptual process underlying the recognition of facial identity in typical adults. We began with an original face and an averaged face and then created an anti-face that differed from the averaged face in the opposite direction from the original face by a small amount (near adaptor) or a large amount (far adaptor). To test for norm-based coding, we adapted participants on different trials to the near versus far adaptor, then asked them to judge the identity of the averaged face. We varied the size of the test and adapting faces in order to reduce any contribution of low-level adaptation. Consistent with the predictions of norm-based coding, high functioning adults with ASD (n = 27) and matched typical participants (n = 28) showed identity aftereffects that were larger for the far than near adaptor. Unlike results with children with ASD, the strength of the aftereffects were similar in the two groups. This is the first study to demonstrate norm-based coding of facial identity in adults with ASD.

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“…For example, observers can extract the mean size from a set of circles of different sizes seen for 500ms, but are relatively poor at identifying individual members of the set [2]. Sensitivity to summary statistics has been demonstrated in a variety of perceptual domains, including size [e.g., 2, 3-5], orientation [e.g., 6,7], facial expression [e.g., 8,9,10], facial identity [e.g., 10,11,12], and color [e.g., 13,14,15]. Much of this research has focused on whether the mean value of an ensemble has a special perceptual salience.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%