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Unimpaired Perception of Social and Physical Causality, but Impaired Perception of Animacy in High Functioning Children with Autism

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Abstract

We investigated perception of social and physical causality and animacy in simple motion events, for high-functioning children with autism (CA = 13, VMA = 9.6). Children matched 14 different animations to pictures showing physical, social or non-causality. In contrast to previous work, children with autism performed at a high level similar to VMA-matched controls, recognizing physical causality in launch and social causality in reaction events. The launch deficit previously found in younger children with autism, possibly related to attentional/verbal difficulties, is apparently overcome with age. Some events involved squares moving non-rigidly, like animals. Children with autism had difficulties recognizing this, extending the biological motion literature. However, animacy prompts amplified their attributions of social causality. Thus children with autism may overcome their animacy perception deficit strategically.

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Notes

  1. The same results obtained for correlations between VIQ and children’s accuracy, with only 3 of 45 correlations within and across groups significant.

  2. ANOVA on categorical data is appropriate if proportions are not extreme (e.g., Lunney 1970; Rosenthal and Rosnow 1984).

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Acknowledgments

This paper is based on SC’s doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Siena. SC was supported by a doctoral fellowship of Regione Sardegna and by the University of Siena, AS and ER were supported by ESRC grant R000230198. Many thanks to the children and parents involved, in particular to Giacomo Vivanti for his comments and his help in testing children with autism, to the staff at the Neuropsychiatry Unit at the Hospital in Siena, and L’Aquila, to the staff at the Quartu S.E. primary school, and to Luca Surian for discussion.

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  1. Dipartimento di Filosofia e Scienze Sociali, University of Siena, Siena, Italy

    Sara Congiu

  2. Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, UK

    Anne Schlottmann & Elizabeth Ray

  3. Dipartimento di Scienze della Cognizione e della Formazione, University of Trento, Corso Bettini 31, 38068, Rovereto, TN, Italy

    Sara Congiu

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  1. Sara Congiu
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Congiu, S., Schlottmann, A. & Ray, E. Unimpaired Perception of Social and Physical Causality, but Impaired Perception of Animacy in High Functioning Children with Autism. J Autism Dev Disord 40, 39–53 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-009-0824-2

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