Department of Psychology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
Sci Rep. 2019 Jul 30;9(1):11029. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-47377-0.
We tested the relationship between biological motion perception and the Autism-Spectrum Quotient. In three experiments, we indexed observers' performance on a classic left-right discrimination task in which participants were asked to report the facing direction of walkers containing solely structural or kinematics information, a motion discrimination task in which participants were asked to indicate the apparent motion of a (non-biological) random-dot stimulus, and a novel naturalness discrimination task. In the naturalness discrimination task, we systematically manipulated the degree of natural acceleration contained in the stimulus by parametrically morphing between a fully veridical stimulus and one where acceleration was removed. Participants were asked to discriminate the more natural stimulus (i.e., acceleration-containing stimulus) from the constant velocity stimulus. Although we found no reliable associations between overall AQ scores nor subdomain scores with performance on the direction-related tasks, we found a robust association between performance on the biological motion naturalness task and attention switching domain scores. Our findings suggest that understanding the relationship between the Autism Spectrum and perception is a far more intricate problem than previously suggested. While it has been shown that the AQ can be used as a proxy to tap into perceptual endophenotypes in Autism, the eventual diagnostic value of the perceptual task depends on the task's consideration of biological content and demands.
我们测试了生物运动知觉与孤独症谱系商数（Autism-Spectrum Quotient）之间的关系。在三个实验中，我们记录了被试在经典的左右辨别任务、运动辨别任务和新颖的自然性辨别任务中的表现。在左右辨别任务中，被试需要报告仅包含结构或运动信息的步行者的朝向；在运动辨别任务中，被试需要指示（非生物）随机点刺激的表观运动；在自然性辨别任务中，我们通过参数变形在完全真实的刺激和去除加速度的刺激之间系统地操纵刺激中的自然加速度程度。被试需要辨别更自然的刺激（即包含加速度的刺激）和恒速刺激。虽然我们没有发现整体 AQ 得分或子域得分与方向相关任务的表现之间存在可靠的关联，但我们发现生物运动自然性任务的表现与注意力转换域分数之间存在很强的关联。我们的研究结果表明，理解孤独症谱系与知觉之间的关系比之前所认为的要复杂得多。虽然已经表明 AQ 可以用作孤独症中感知内表型的替代指标，但感知任务的最终诊断价值取决于任务对生物内容和需求的考虑。
