Visual Search for Circumscribed Interests in Autism Is Similar to That of Neurotypical Individuals

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Benjamin M. Silver¹  Mary M. Conte²  Jonathan D. Victor²  Rebecca M. Jones⁴ 

[1] Department of Psychology, Columbia University in the City of New York, United States;Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Cornell Medicine, United States;Department of Neurology, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Cornell Medicine, United States;The Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Cornell Medicine, United States

关键词: autism spectrum disorder;    visual processing;    serial processing;    parallel processing;    circumscribed interests;    visual search;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2020.582074

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Intense interests are a core symptom of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and can be all-encompassing for affected individuals. This observation raises the hypothesis that intense interests in ASD are related to pervasive changes in visual processing for objects within that category, including visual search. We assayed visual processing with two novel tasks, targeting category search and exemplar search. For each task, three kinds of stimuli were used: faces, houses, and images personalized to each participant’s interest. 25 children and adults with ASD were compared to 25 neurotypical (NT) children and adults. We found no differences in either visual search task between ASD and NT controls for interests. Thus, pervasive alterations in perception are not likely to account for ASD behavioral symptoms.

【 授权许可】

CC BY