Visuo‐spatial abilities in autism: A review

Abstract

Individuals with autism show various signs of heightened abilities in visuo-spatial functioning. First, it is long-established that they excel on embedded figures and block design tests relative to comparison participants. Second, some evidence suggests that processing global features is affected by inappropriate processing of the constituent elements of a stimulus. Third, they are more accurate than comparison participants in judging the shape of a slanted circle in a context in which ambient visual cues are eliminated. This suggests that their perception of the shape is less influenced by prior knowledge. Fourth, they are fast at searching for feature and conjunctive targets in a visual array. Contrary to earlier reports, however, they are susceptible to visual illusions. Also, they do show evidence of utilising prior knowledge when pairing a colour with an atypically coloured target. Accordingly, we conclude that there is something distinctive about autistic visuo-spatial functioning, but not necessarily in ways that are predicted by the 'weak central coherence' hypothesis.

Mental imagery scanning in autism spectrum disorder

“…This finding is in line with a large body of work demonstrating intact or even superior visual-spatial abilities in ASD (e.g., Caron et al, 2004;Falter et al, 2008;Mitchell & Ropar, 2004;Ozonoff, Pennington, & Rogers, 1991;Shah & Frith, 1993;Souliè res et al, 2011). Indeed, previous work by Caron et al (2004) has reported preserved spatial abilities in ASD in route mapping, route map reversal and survey mapping.…”

“…Limited work to date has examined mental imagery abilities in ASD, and none has examined the nature of these abilities in mental image scanning, yet this is pertinent for shedding new light on the rigid navigational strategies often reported in the disorder (e.g., Lind et al, 2013). Although visual-spatial abilities are largely reported to be intact or even enhanced in ASD (Falter, Plaisted, & Davis, 2008;Souliè res et al, 2011, andsee Mitchell &Ropar, 2004) a key question was whether this is also the case for visuo-spatial mental imagery scanning. Overall, we found a very similar pattern of performance between ASD and comparison participants: The ASD group showed a similar time-distance scanning relationship and were just as susceptible to top-down signpost information.…”

Visuo-Spatial Performance in Autism: A Meta-analysis

“…Furthermore, the assumption that visuo-spatial skills are indeed superior (Mitchell and Ropar 2004) has been used as a rationale for many studies and theories, yet findings reported in the literature are discrepant; while some claim performance in a certain task to be robustly superior in autism (e.g., Lee et al 2007;Shah and Frith 1993), others disagree (e.g., Bölte et al 2007;Manjaly et al 2007;White and Saldana 2011).…”

Color Perception in Children with Autism

“…For example, persons with autism have been shown to out perform control groups on the embedded figures task (Jolliffe & Baron-Cohen, 1997;Shah & Frith, 1983), block design (Rumsey & Maberger, 1988;Shah & Frith, 1993); visual search (O'Riordan, 2004;O'Riordan, Plaisted, Driver & Baron-Cohen, 2001;Plaisted, O'Riordan & Baron-Cohen, 1998a); and the reproduction of impossible figures (Mottron, Belleville & Ménard, 1999). Enhanced perception and discrimination has also been shown for pitch processing, musical processing and processing of auditory stimuli (eg., Bonnel et al, 2003;Heaton, Hermelin & Pring, 1998;Mottron, Peretz & Ménard, 2000), visuo-spatial perception (Caron, Mottron, Rainville, Chouinard, 2004;Mitchell & Ropar, 2004) and discrimination of novel stimuli (Plaisted, O'Riordan & Baron-Cohen, 1998b), leading to theories that those with autism show superior visual discrimination or an enhanced perceptual functioning (eg., Mottron & Burack, 2001;Mottron, Dawson, Soulières, Hubert & Burack, 2006) that may extend to a large number of perceptual domains (Mottron, Peretz and Ménard, 2000). However, an impaired perceptual ability in autism has been shown for some other domains such as motion (e.g., Spencer et al, 2000;Milne at al., 2002; but see also Bertrone, Mottron, Jelenic & Faubert: 2003 Here we investigate whether there are also differences in the color perception of those with and those without autism.…”