Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Graduate Program in Neuroscience, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Autism Res. 2023 Nov;16(11):2100-2109. doi: 10.1002/aur.3030. Epub 2023 Sep 23.
Difficulties in various face processing tasks have been well documented in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Several meta-analyses and numerous case-control studies have indicated that this population experiences a moderate degree of impairment, with a small percentage of studies failing to detect any impairment. One possible account of this mixed pattern of findings is heterogeneity in face processing abilities stemming from the presence of a subpopulation of prosopagnosic individuals with ASD alongside those with normal face processing skills. Samples randomly drawn from such a population, especially relatively smaller ones, would vary in the proportion of participants with prosopagnosia, resulting in a wide range of group-level deficits from mild (or none) to severe across studies. We test this prosopagnosic subpopulation hypothesis by examining three groups of participants: adults with ASD, adults with developmental prosopagnosia (DP), and a comparison group. Our results show that the prosopagnosic subpopulation hypothesis does not account for the face impairments in the broader autism spectrum. ASD observers show a continuous and graded, rather than categorical, heterogeneity that span a range of face processing skills including many with mild to moderate deficits, inconsistent with a prosopagnosic subtype account. We suggest that pathogenic origins of face deficits for at least some with ASD differ from those of DP.
在自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）中，各种面部处理任务的困难都有很好的记录。几项荟萃分析和许多病例对照研究表明，该人群存在中度障碍，少数研究未能发现任何障碍。这种混合发现模式的一个可能解释是，由于存在伴有 ASD 的面孔失认症个体和具有正常面孔处理能力的个体的亚群，导致面孔处理能力的异质性。从这样的人群中随机抽取的样本，尤其是相对较小的样本，在面孔失认症参与者的比例上会有所不同，导致研究之间的组间缺陷从轻度（或无）到重度差异很大。我们通过检查三组参与者来检验这种面孔失认症亚群假设：自闭症患者、发育性面孔失认症（DP）患者和对照组。我们的结果表明，面孔失认症亚群假设并不能解释更广泛的自闭症谱系中的面孔障碍。ASD 观察者表现出连续和分级的异质性，而不是分类的异质性，跨越了一系列面孔处理技能，包括许多具有轻度到中度缺陷的技能，这与面孔失认症亚型的解释不一致。我们认为，至少一些 ASD 患者的面孔缺陷的发病机制起源与 DP 不同。
