Abstract
Atypical visual processing in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) does not seem to reside in an isolated processing component, such as global or local processing. We therefore developed a paradigm that requires the interaction between different processes—an identification task with Gaborized object outlines—and applied this to two age groups of 6-to-10 and 10-to-14 year old children with and without ASD. Event history analyses demonstrated an identification disadvantage in the ASD group, which remained quite stable during the temporal unfolding of the outline. The typically developing group particularly outperformed the ASD group when more complex contours were shown. Together, our results suggest that the interplay between local and global processes and between bottom-up and top-down processes is disturbed in ASD.
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Notes
Note. In Experiment 2, both male and female participants were included, whereas in Experiment 1, only boys participated. Fitting the reduced model at a subset of only male participants, yielded similar results.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to all participating children and their parents. Special thanks to the participating special needs school, Ten Bunderen (Moorslede), and two mainstream schools, De Puzzel (Kleine-Brogel) and De Schommel (Lommel). Thanks to Bart Machilsen for stimulus construction (Experiment 2). We thank Birgitt Haesen and the following master students for their assistance with data collection: Nele Berghmans, Stéphanie Deckmyn, Sanne Drees, Tine Herreman, Ellen Janssen, Loes Steegmans, Lotte van Esch, Alysée Van Laeken, and Leen Vercammen. This research was funded by the Methusalem program by the Flemish Government (METH 08/02) awarded to Johan Wagemans and a grant from the Research Council of the KU Leuven (IDO/080/013) awarded to Jean Steyaert, Johan Wagemans, and Ilse Noens.
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Evers, K., Panis, S., Torfs, K. et al. Disturbed Interplay Between Mid- and High-Level Vision in ASD? Evidence from a Contour Identification Task with Everyday Objects. J Autism Dev Disord 44, 801–815 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-013-1931-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-013-1931-7