Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 2013 Apr;39(2):494-509. doi: 10.1037/a0029400. Epub 2012 Sep 10.
Evidence suggests that people with autism rely less on holistic visual information than typical adults. The current studies examine this by investigating core visual processes that contribute to holistic processing--namely, individuation and element grouping--and how they develop in participants with autism and typically developing (TD) participants matched for age, IQ, and gender. Individuation refers to the ability to "see" approximately four elements simultaneously; grouping elements can modify how many elements can be individuated. We examined these processes using two well-established paradigms, rapid enumeration and multiple object tracking (MOT). In both tasks, a performance limit of four elements in typical adults is thought to reflect individuation capacity. Participants with autism displayed a smaller individuation capacity than TD controls, regardless of whether they were enumerating static elements or tracking moving ones. To manipulate the holistic information available via element grouping, elements were arranged into a design in rapid enumeration, or moved together in MOT. Performance in participants with autism was affected to a similar degree as TD participants by element grouping, whether the manipulation helped or hurt performance, consistent with evidence that some types of gestalt/grouping information are processed typically in autism. There was substantial development from childhood to adolescence in the speed of individuation in those with autism, but not from adolescence to adulthood, a pattern distinct from TD participants. These results reveal how core visual processes function in autism, and provide insight into the architecture of vision (i.e., individuation appears distinct from visual strengths in autism, such as visual search).
有证据表明，自闭症患者对整体视觉信息的依赖程度不如典型成年人。本研究通过调查有助于整体加工的核心视觉过程（即个体化和元素分组）及其在自闭症患者和年龄、智商和性别匹配的典型发育（TD）参与者中的发展情况来检验这一点。个体化是指“同时看到”大约四个元素的能力；分组元素可以改变可以个体化的元素数量。我们使用两种成熟的范式（快速计数和多目标跟踪（MOT））来研究这些过程。在这两个任务中，典型成年人的四个元素的表现极限被认为反映了个体化能力。自闭症患者的个体化能力明显低于 TD 对照组，无论他们是在计数静态元素还是跟踪移动元素。为了通过元素分组来操纵整体可用信息，在快速计数中，元素被排列成一个设计，或者在 MOT 中一起移动。元素分组对自闭症患者的表现影响与 TD 参与者相似，无论是对表现有帮助还是有伤害，这与某些类型的整体/分组信息在自闭症中被典型处理的证据一致。自闭症患者的个体化速度从儿童期到青春期有显著发展，但从青春期到成年期没有发展，这与 TD 参与者的模式不同。这些结果揭示了核心视觉过程在自闭症中的功能，并深入了解了视觉架构（即个体化与自闭症中的视觉优势（例如视觉搜索）不同）。
