School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, United Kingdom.
Autism Res. 2010 Jun;3(3):113-9. doi: 10.1002/aur.130.
Previous research [Ropar & Mitchell, 2002] has shown that autistic individuals are somewhat immune to biases induced by top-down processes, particularly the influence of previous knowledge on perception. In order to test this hypothesis within perception, 18 participants with autism who had measured intelligence in the normal range were compared against 18 matched controls in their susceptibility to the Shepard illusion. The illusion consists in misperceiving the shape of a parallelogram in the presence of depth cues. It is attributed [Mitchell, Ropar, Ackroyd, & Rajendran, 2005] to the effect of top-down constraints within perception. The task involved adjusting a stimulus to the dimensions of a template on a computer screen. Both groups were susceptible to the illusion and the illusion effect was stronger when three-dimensional perspective cues were prominent. Notably, participants with autism were less susceptible to the illusion than typically developing individuals. The findings raise the possibility that in some instances top-down influences are attenuated in individuals with autism.
先前的研究[Ropar & Mitchell，2002]表明，自闭症个体对自上而下过程引起的偏差具有一定的免疫力，特别是先前知识对感知的影响。为了在感知范围内检验这一假设，研究比较了 18 名自闭症患者和 18 名匹配的对照组，他们在感知中对 Shepard 错觉的易感性。错觉表现为在存在深度线索的情况下错误地感知平行四边形的形状。这归因于[Mitchell、Ropar、Ackroyd 和 Rajendran，2005]知觉中的自上而下约束的影响。任务涉及在计算机屏幕上根据模板调整刺激的尺寸。两组人都容易受到错觉的影响，并且当三维透视线索明显时，错觉效应更强。值得注意的是，自闭症患者比正常发育的个体对错觉的敏感性较低。这些发现提出了一种可能性，即在某些情况下，自闭症个体的自上而下的影响会减弱。
