Mind & behavior · 2022
How does visual noise affect autistic children's ability to judge the overall direction of moving patterns?
In a study of children and adolescents, the group needed larger differences in overall motion direction to distinguish directions than typically developing controls at every tested noise level. The ASD group also showed much greater individual variation in how external noise affected motion-direction thresholds.
Details
Alongside social, cognitive, and behavioral difficulties, differences in sensory processing—including atypical processing of overall, or global, motion—have been reported in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Whether motion pooling is enhanced in ASD remains debated.
This comparative psychophysical study aimed to compare global motion integration in ASD using a low-density display and the equivalent noise (EN) approach. A total of 57 children and adolescents with ASD or typical development (TD) judged the average movement direction of 30 Laplacian-of-Gaussian micro-patterns. The patterns' movement directions followed a normal distribution with standard deviations of 2°, 5°, 10°, 15°, 25°, and 35°, representing the added external noise.
The ASD group showed much larger individual differences than the TD group in the effects of external noise on motion-direction thresholds. Using the equivalent noise paradigm, the researchers found that global motion direction discrimination thresholds were higher in the ASD group than in controls at every noise level tested.
The findings suggest that individuals with ASD have a poorer ability to integrate local motion information in low-density displays.
What do you think?
Good conversations begin with curiosity.
You can read comments without an account. Sign in to write.
Loading comments…