Brosnan Mark J, Scott Fiona J, Fox Simone, Pye Jackie
Department of Psychology, University of Bath, UK.
J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2004 Mar;45(3):459-69. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-7610.2004.00237.x.
Deficits in autism have been characterised as a bias towards local over global processing. This paper examines whether there is a deficit in gestalt grouping in autism.
Twenty-five low-functioning children with autism and 25 controls who were matched for chronological age and verbal mental age took part in the study.
The autism group utilised gestalt grouping principles (proximity, similarity, closure) significantly less than the controls. Calculating an overall index of gestalt grouping, the autism group performed at chance level. There was also a deficit in identifying certain impossible figures. This pattern was not reflected in a drawing task, in which the autism sample conformed more to gestalt grouping principles than controls (non-significantly).
The results are discussed in terms of a failure in autism to process inter-element relationships that would allow for the appreciation of larger perceptually coherent units that comprise of multiple elements and, consequently, context. The processes are argued to be preattentive.
自闭症患者的缺陷被描述为偏向于局部而非整体加工。本文研究自闭症患者在格式塔分组方面是否存在缺陷。
25名低功能自闭症儿童和25名在实际年龄和语言心理年龄上相匹配的对照组儿童参与了该研究。
自闭症组运用格式塔分组原则（接近性、相似性、封闭性）的程度显著低于对照组。计算格式塔分组的总体指数时，自闭症组的表现处于随机水平。在识别某些不可能图形方面也存在缺陷。这种模式在绘画任务中未体现，在绘画任务中，自闭症样本比对照组更符合格式塔分组原则（无显著差异）。
根据自闭症患者在处理元素间关系方面的失败来讨论这些结果，这种失败会导致无法理解由多个元素组成的更大的感知连贯单元，进而无法理解背景。这些过程被认为是前注意的。
