University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Royal Holloway, University of London, UK.
Autism. 2022 Oct;26(7):1737-1751. doi: 10.1177/13623613211065297. Epub 2021 Dec 28.
Some theories suggested that social difficulties in autism arise from differences in the processing of faces. If face-processing difficulties are central to autism, then they should be as persistent as social difficulties across the lifespan. We tested this by asking autistic and neurotypical participants between 30 and 75 years to complete face detection tasks. Both autistic and neurotypical adults responded more slowly with age. When participants had to respond quickly, autistic adults made more errors in face detection regardless of their age. However, when the time constraint was removed, autistic adults performed as well as the neurotypical group. Across tasks, autistic adults responded more slowly when asked to detect both face and non-face stimuli. We also investigated brain activation differences in the face detection task with functional magnetic resonance imaging. The results indicated lower activation in the autism group in the left and right superior frontal gyrus. The superior frontal gyrus is not typically implicated in face processing but in more general processing, for example, keeping instructions in mind and following them. Together with the behavioral results, this suggests that there is no specific deficit in face processing in autistic adults between 30 and 75 years. Instead, the results suggest differences in general processing, particularly in the speed of processing. However, this needs to be investigated further with methods that are more sensitive to the timing of brain activation.
一些理论表明，自闭症患者的社交困难源于其对面部处理的差异。如果面部处理困难是自闭症的核心问题，那么它们应该像社交困难一样贯穿整个生命周期。我们通过要求 30 至 75 岁的自闭症和神经典型参与者完成面部检测任务来验证这一点。自闭症和神经典型成年人的反应都会随着年龄的增长而变慢。当参与者必须快速反应时，无论年龄大小，自闭症成年人在面部检测中都会犯更多的错误。然而，当时间限制被取消时，自闭症成年人的表现与神经典型组一样好。在所有任务中，当被要求检测面部和非面部刺激时，自闭症成年人的反应速度都较慢。我们还使用功能磁共振成像研究了面部检测任务中的大脑激活差异。结果表明，自闭症组的左侧和右侧额上回的激活较低。额上回通常不涉及面部处理，而是涉及更一般的处理，例如牢记指令并按照指令执行。结合行为结果，这表明在 30 至 75 岁之间，自闭症成年人在面部处理方面没有特定的缺陷。相反，结果表明存在一般处理方面的差异，特别是在处理速度方面。然而，这需要使用更敏感的大脑激活定时方法进一步研究。
