Wallace Simon, Coleman Michael, Bailey Anthony
Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Warneford Hospital, Oxford, UK.
Autism Res. 2008 Feb;1(1):43-51. doi: 10.1002/aur.7.
The nature and extent of face-processing impairments in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) remain contentious. The aim of this research study is to assess the face- and object-processing performance of individuals with ASD compared with typically developing controls. Our hypothesis was that individuals with ASD would be significantly impaired on tests of face processing but show intact object processing. More specifically, we tested two competing hypotheses to explain face-processing deficits: holistic hypothesis; second-order configural hypothesis. Twenty-six able adults with ASD and 26 intelligence quotient-matched typically developing controls completed two computerized tests of face and object discrimination. In task 1, the first picture (faces or cars) in a pair was presented as quickly as 40 msec to test holistic processing. In task 2, the decision was whether pairs of faces or houses had been altered in terms of the features or the distance between the features (the second-order configural properties). Individuals with ASD were impaired on all tests of face processing but showed intact object processing and the pattern of findings favored the holistic hypothesis. The heterogeneous pattern of performance in the clinical group showed that some individuals with ASD perform similarly to typically developing individuals in their face-processing skills, whereas others are more accurate in object processing compared with face processing.
自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）患者面部加工障碍的性质和程度仍存在争议。本研究的目的是评估ASD患者与正常发育对照组相比的面部和物体加工表现。我们的假设是，ASD患者在面部加工测试中会有显著损伤，但物体加工表现正常。更具体地说，我们测试了两种相互竞争的假设来解释面部加工缺陷：整体假设；二阶构型假设。26名患有ASD的健全成年人和26名智商匹配的正常发育对照组完成了两项面部和物体辨别计算机化测试。在任务1中，一对中的第一张图片（面部或汽车）以最快40毫秒的速度呈现，以测试整体加工。在任务2中，判断成对的面部或房屋在特征或特征之间的距离（二阶构型属性）方面是否发生了改变。ASD患者在所有面部加工测试中均受损，但物体加工表现正常，研究结果模式支持整体假设。临床组中表现的异质性模式表明，一些ASD患者在面部加工技能方面的表现与正常发育个体相似，而另一些患者在物体加工方面比面部加工更准确。
