ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia.
Neuropsychologia. 2013 Nov;51(13):2702-8. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2013.08.016. Epub 2013 Aug 29.
Our ability to discriminate and recognize thousands of faces despite their similarity as visual patterns relies on adaptive, norm-based, coding mechanisms that are continuously updated by experience. Reduced adaptive coding of face identity has been proposed as a neurocognitive endophenotype for autism, because it is found in autism and in relatives of individuals with autism. Autistic traits can also extend continuously into the general population, raising the possibility that reduced adaptive coding of face identity may be more generally associated with autistic traits. In the present study, we investigated whether adaptive coding of face identity decreases as autistic traits increase in an undergraduate population. Adaptive coding was measured using face identity aftereffects, and autistic traits were measured using the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) and its subscales. We also measured face and car recognition ability to determine whether autistic traits are selectively related to face recognition difficulties. We found that men who scored higher on levels of autistic traits related to social interaction had reduced adaptive coding of face identity. This result is consistent with the idea that atypical adaptive face-coding mechanisms are an endophenotype for autism. Autistic traits were also linked with face-selective recognition difficulties in men. However, there were some unexpected sex differences. In women, autistic traits were linked positively, rather than negatively, with adaptive coding of identity, and were unrelated to face-selective recognition difficulties. These sex differences indicate that autistic traits can have different neurocognitive correlates in men and women and raise the intriguing possibility that endophenotypes of autism can differ in males and females.
我们能够识别和区分数以千计的人脸，尽管它们作为视觉模式非常相似，这依赖于适应性的、基于规范的编码机制，这些机制会不断被经验所更新。有人提出，面部身份的适应性编码减少是自闭症的一种神经认知内表型，因为这种现象不仅在自闭症患者中存在，也在自闭症患者的亲属中存在。自闭症特征也可以在一般人群中连续延伸，这增加了这样一种可能性，即面部身份的适应性编码减少可能与自闭症特征更为普遍相关。在本研究中，我们调查了在大学生群体中，随着自闭症特征的增加，面部身份的适应性编码是否会减少。我们使用面孔身份后效来测量适应性编码，使用自闭症特质问卷（AQ）及其分量表来测量自闭症特质。我们还测量了面孔和汽车识别能力，以确定自闭症特征是否与面孔识别困难有选择性的关系。我们发现，在与社交互动相关的自闭症特征得分较高的男性中，面部身份的适应性编码减少。这一结果与非典型适应性面孔编码机制是自闭症内表型的观点一致。男性的自闭症特征也与面孔选择性识别困难有关。然而，也存在一些意想不到的性别差异。在女性中，自闭症特征与身份的适应性编码呈正相关，而不是负相关，与面孔选择性识别困难无关。这些性别差异表明，自闭症特征在男性和女性中的神经认知相关性可能不同，并提出了一个有趣的可能性，即自闭症的内表型在男性和女性中可能不同。
