Sensory processing patterns predict the integration of information held in visual working memory.

Abstract

Given the limited resources of visual working memory, multiple items may be remembered as an averaged group or ensemble. As a result, local information may be ill-defined, but these ensemble representations provide accurate diagnostics of the natural world by combining gist information with item-level information held in visual working memory. Some neurodevelopmental disorders are characterized by sensory processing profiles that predispose individuals to avoid or seek-out sensory stimulation, fundamentally altering their perceptual experience. Here, we report such processing styles will affect the computation of ensemble statistics in the general population. We identified stable adult sensory processing patterns to demonstrate that individuals with low sensory thresholds who show a greater proclivity to engage in active response strategies to prevent sensory overstimulation are less likely to integrate mean size information across a set of similar items and are therefore more likely to be biased away from the mean size representation of an ensemble display. We therefore propose the study of ensemble processing should extend beyond the statistics of the display, and should also consider the statistics of the observer. (PsycINFO Database Record

Relating the perception of visual ensemble statistics to individual levels of autistic traits

“…Specifically, individuals with levels of ASD traits were less likely to represent individual items of a certain color as biased toward the probed mean of an ensemble representation with items containing that color, and thus were less likely to integrate similar perceptual information from the environment. These results are consistent with previous findings linking sensory processing patterns with measures of ensemble bias (Lowe et al, 2016b), yet extend this work by providing a more direct investigation of the relationship between ensemble processing and autistic traits.…”

“…In fact, neural regions involved in the processing of ensemble information overlap with scene-selective areas (Cant & Xu, 2012, and these areas may represent multiple properties of the visual environment that influence our perceptual experience of the world (Lowe et al, 2016a). The present findings may therefore shed light on the cognitive mechanisms underlying the different, and often detail-focused, experience of the visual world observed in individuals with ASD, and also build on existing evidence demonstrating how individual differences influence the processing of ensemble features in the environment (Yang et al, 2013;Haberman, Brady, & Alvarez, 2015;Lowe et al, 2016b). The distribution and direction of mean size bias for all participants.…”

“…As a spectrum disorder, traits associated with ASD are seen in the general population, and the study of autistic traits in non-clinical samples affords a practical way to explore aspects of the autism spectrum, and is an approach that has successfully generalized experimental findings in TD to similar findings in ASD populations (Bölte et al, 2011;Chandler et al, 2007;Constantino et al, 2003;Stevenson et al, 2018a). The present study examines the relationship between autistic traits and the representation of ensemble statistics in visual working memory in a TD population by combining an ensemble processing task (Brady & Alvarez, 2011), which has been previously used to measure individual differences in perception (Lowe et al, 2016b), with the self-assessed Autism-spectrum Quotient (AQ) questionnaire (Baron- Cohen et al, 2001). In this ensemble paradigm, participants are presented with an array of circles of varying colors, and asked to remember the size of particular colors of circles while ignoring others.…”

“…Given the capacity limits of visual working memory, this processing strategy may be critical for capturing the richness of our perceptual experience (Cohen et al, 2016). Recently, the integration of ensemble statistics with items held in visual working memory has been shown to correlate with individual differences in sensory processing patterns (Lowe et al, 2016b), which capture variability in behavioral strategies and neurological responses to general sensory experience (Dunn, 1997). Specifically, individuals with lower sensory thresholds were less likely to integrate mean size information across a set of similar items, suggesting a possible mechanism through which disordered perception may occur.…”

Perceptual Averaging in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…For example, it is possible that the university students tested in the control group may have had a slightly higher average IQ, or that ASD participants may have scored higher in performance IQ measures than controls due to compensatory mechanisms relating to stronger visuo-spatial abilities. Although these issues were outside the scope of our initial investigation of whether there is any evidence of perceptual averaging in ASD, they do provide strong motivation for future research using similar paradigms to quantify any systematic differences related to perceptual averaging that may be manifest in larger samples of ASD and control participants, perhaps by testing participants from the general public and correlating their performance on standardized measures of ASD with their performance in tasks such as the present mean/member and adaptation tasks (e.g., Lowe et al, 2016). …”