O'Riordan M, Plaisted K
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, UK.
Q J Exp Psychol A. 2001 Nov;54(4):961-79. doi: 10.1080/713756000.
Children with autism are superior to typically developing children at visual search tasks (O'Riordan, Plaisted, Driver, & Baron-Cohen, in press; Plaisted, O'Riordan, & Baron-Cohen, 1998b). This study investigates the reasons for this phenomenon. The performance of children with autism and of typically developing children was compared on a series of visual search tasks to investigate two related problems. The first issue was whether the critical determinant of search rate in children is the discriminability of the display items, as it is in normal adults. The second question investigated was whether the superior performance of individuals with autism on visual search tasks is due to an enhanced ability to discriminate between display items. The results demonstrated that discriminability is the rate-determining factor for children with and without autism, replicating earlier findings with normal adults, and that children with autism have an enhanced ability to discriminate between display items. Thus, it seems that an enhanced ability to discriminate between display items underlies superior visual search in autism.
患有自闭症的儿童在视觉搜索任务上比发育正常的儿童表现更出色（奥里奥丹、普莱斯特德、德赖弗和巴伦 - 科恩，即将发表；普莱斯特德、奥里奥丹和巴伦 - 科恩，1998b）。本研究探讨了这一现象的原因。对患有自闭症的儿童和发育正常的儿童在一系列视觉搜索任务中的表现进行了比较，以研究两个相关问题。第一个问题是，儿童搜索速度的关键决定因素是否像正常成年人一样，是显示项目的可辨别性。所研究的第二个问题是，自闭症患者在视觉搜索任务上的出色表现是否归因于其辨别显示项目之间差异的能力增强。结果表明，可辨别性是患有和未患自闭症儿童的速度决定因素，这重复了早期对正常成年人的研究结果，并且患有自闭症的儿童辨别显示项目之间差异的能力增强。因此，似乎辨别显示项目之间差异的能力增强是自闭症患者出色视觉搜索能力的基础。
