Serra M, Althaus M, de Sonneville L M J, Stant A D, Jackson A E, Minderaa R B
Academic Centre for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Groningen, The Netherlands.
J Autism Dev Disord. 2003 Jun;33(3):303-17. doi: 10.1023/a:1024458618172.
This study investigates the accuracy and speed of face recognition in children with a Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (PDDNOS; DSM-IV, American Psychiatric Association [APA], 1994). The study includes a clinical group of 26 nonretarded 7- to 10-year-old children with PDDNOS and a control group of 65 normally developing children of the same age. Two computerized reaction time tasks were administered: a face recognition task and a control task designed to measure the recognition of abstract visuospatial patterns. The latter were either easy or difficult to distinguish from a set of alternative patterns. The normally developing children recognized the faces much faster than the hardly distinguishable abstract patterns. The children in the PDDNOS group needed an amount of time to recognize the faces that almost equalled the time they needed to recognize the abstract patterns that were difficult to distinguish. The results suggest that, when processing faces, children with PDDNOS use a strategy that is more attention-demanding and, hence, less automatic or "Gestalt-like" than the one used by the control children. The results are discussed in the light of a theory that explains the development of coherent mental representations.
本研究调查了未另行指定的广泛性发育障碍（PDDNOS；《精神疾病诊断与统计手册第四版》，美国精神病学协会[APA]，1994）儿童的人脸识别准确性和速度。该研究包括一个由26名7至10岁无智力障碍的PDDNOS儿童组成的临床组和一个由65名同年龄正常发育儿童组成的对照组。进行了两项计算机化反应时间任务：一项人脸识别任务和一项旨在测量抽象视觉空间模式识别的对照任务。后者与一组替代模式相比，要么容易区分，要么难以区分。正常发育的儿童识别面孔的速度比难以区分的抽象模式快得多。PDDNOS组的儿童识别面孔所需的时间几乎与他们识别难以区分抽象模式所需的时间相等。结果表明，在处理面孔时，PDDNOS儿童使用的策略比对照儿童使用的策略更需要注意力，因此更不自动或更不像“格式塔样”。根据一种解释连贯心理表征发展的理论对结果进行了讨论。
