O'Hearn Kirsten, Tanaka James, Lynn Andrew, Fedor Jennifer, Minshew Nancy, Luna Beatriz
Laboratory of Neurocognitive Development, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Victoria, BC, Canada.
Brain Cogn. 2014 Oct;90:124-34. doi: 10.1016/j.bandc.2014.06.004. Epub 2014 Jul 12.
A lack of typical age-related improvement from adolescence to adulthood contributes to face recognition deficits in adults with autism on the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT). The current studies examine if this atypical developmental trajectory generalizes to other tasks and objects, including parts of the face. The CFMT tests recognition of whole faces, often with a substantial delay. The current studies used the immediate memory (IM) task and the parts-whole face task from the Let's Face It! battery, which examines whole faces, face parts, and cars, without a delay between memorization and test trials. In the IM task, participants memorize a face or car. Immediately after the target disappears, participants identify the target from two similar distractors. In the part-whole task, participants memorize a whole face. Immediately after the face disappears, participants identify the target from a distractor with different eyes or mouth, either as a face part or a whole face. Results indicate that recognition deficits in autism become more robust by adulthood, consistent with previous work, and also become more general, including cars. In the IM task, deficits in autism were specific to faces in childhood, but included cars by adulthood. In the part-whole task, deficits in autism became more robust by adulthood, including both eyes and mouths as parts and in whole faces. Across tasks, the deficit in autism increased between adolescence and adulthood, reflecting a lack of typical improvement, leading to deficits with non-face stimuli and on a task without a memory delay. These results suggest that brain maturation continues to be affected into adulthood in autism, and that the transition from adolescence to adulthood is a vulnerable stage for those with autism.
从青春期到成年期缺乏典型的与年龄相关的改善，这导致了患有自闭症的成年人在剑桥面部记忆测试（CFMT）中存在面部识别缺陷。当前的研究考察了这种非典型的发育轨迹是否会推广到其他任务和物体，包括面部的各个部分。CFMT测试对完整面部的识别，通常会有相当长的延迟。当前的研究使用了“面对现实！”测试组中的即时记忆（IM）任务和局部 - 整体面部任务，该测试组考察完整面部、面部局部和汽车，在记忆和测试试验之间没有延迟。在IM任务中，参与者记住一张脸或一辆汽车。目标消失后，参与者立即从两个相似的干扰项中识别出目标。在局部 - 整体任务中，参与者记住一张完整的脸。脸消失后，参与者立即从一个眼睛或嘴巴不同的干扰项中识别出目标，无论是作为面部局部还是完整的脸。结果表明，自闭症患者的识别缺陷在成年期变得更加明显，这与之前的研究一致，并且也变得更加普遍，包括对汽车的识别。在IM任务中，自闭症患者在儿童期的缺陷仅限于面部，但到成年期则包括对汽车的识别。在局部 - 整体任务中，自闭症患者的缺陷在成年期变得更加明显，包括眼睛和嘴巴作为局部以及完整面部的识别。在所有任务中，自闭症患者的缺陷在青春期到成年期之间有所增加，这反映出缺乏典型的改善，导致对非面部刺激以及在没有记忆延迟的任务中出现缺陷。这些结果表明，自闭症患者的大脑成熟在成年期仍受到影响，并且从青春期到成年期的过渡对自闭症患者来说是一个脆弱阶段。
