1University of Glasgow, 62 Hillhead Street, Glasgow, G12 8AD UK.
2Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust, Bradford, UK.
Mol Autism. 2019 Dec 18;10:49. doi: 10.1186/s13229-019-0299-8. eCollection 2019.
Biological motion, namely the movement of others, conveys information that allows the identification of affective states and intentions. This makes it an important avenue of research in autism spectrum disorder where social functioning is one of the main areas of difficulty. We aimed to create a quantitative summary of previous findings and investigate potential factors, which could explain the variable results found in the literature investigating biological motion perception in autism.
A search from five electronic databases yielded 52 papers eligible for a quantitative summarisation, including behavioural, eye-tracking, electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging studies.
Using a three-level random effects meta-analytic approach, we found that individuals with autism generally showed decreased performance in perception and interpretation of biological motion. Results additionally suggest decreased performance when higher order information, such as emotion, is required. Moreover, with the increase of age, the difference between autistic and neurotypical individuals decreases, with children showing the largest effect size overall.
We highlight the need for methodological standards and clear distinctions between the age groups and paradigms utilised when trying to interpret differences between the two populations.
生物运动，即他人的运动，传递了可以识别情感状态和意图的信息。这使其成为自闭症谱系障碍研究的一个重要途径，因为社交功能是主要困难领域之一。我们旨在对以往研究结果进行定量总结，并探讨潜在的因素，这些因素可以解释自闭症生物运动知觉研究文献中发现的可变结果。
从五个电子数据库中搜索，得出了 52 篇有资格进行定量总结的论文，包括行为学、眼动追踪、脑电图和功能磁共振成像研究。
使用三级随机效应荟萃分析方法，我们发现自闭症患者在感知和解释生物运动方面的表现通常较差。结果还表明，当需要更高阶信息（如情感）时，表现会下降。此外，随着年龄的增长，自闭症患者和神经典型个体之间的差异减小，儿童总体上表现出最大的效应量。
我们强调在尝试解释两个群体之间的差异时，需要使用方法学标准和清楚地区分年龄组和使用的范式。
