Center of Optometry, Faculty of Health Sciences, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Cawangan Selangor, 42300, Puncak Alam, Selangor, Malaysia.
Department of Psychology, Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool, UK.
J Autism Dev Disord. 2024 Oct;54(10):3684-3696. doi: 10.1007/s10803-023-06093-5. Epub 2023 Aug 29.
Symmetry studies in autism are inconclusive possibly due to different types of stimuli used which depend on either local or global cues. Therefore, this study compared symmetry detection between 20 autistic and 18 non-autistic adults matched on age, IQ, gender and handedness, using contour integration tasks containing open and closed contours that rely more on local or global processing respectively. Results showed that the autistic group performed equally well with both stimuli and outperformed the non-autistic group only for the open contours, possibly due to a different strategy used in detecting symmetry. However, there were no group differences for the closed contour. Results explain discrepant findings in previous symmetry studies suggesting that symmetry tasks that favour a local strategy may be advantageous for autistic individuals. Implications of the findings towards understanding visual sensory issues in this group are discussed.
对称性研究在自闭症中尚无定论，可能是由于所使用的刺激类型不同，这些刺激依赖于局部或全局线索。因此，本研究比较了 20 名自闭症患者和 18 名非自闭症患者在年龄、智商、性别和惯用手相匹配的情况下，使用包含开放和闭合轮廓的轮廓整合任务来检测对称性，这些任务分别更依赖于局部或全局处理。结果表明，自闭症组对两种刺激的反应相同，并且仅在开放轮廓上优于非自闭症组，这可能是由于检测对称性时使用了不同的策略。然而，对于闭合轮廓，两组之间没有差异。研究结果解释了之前对称性研究中发现的不一致结果，表明偏爱局部策略的对称性任务可能对自闭症个体有利。讨论了这些发现对理解该群体视觉感官问题的意义。
