Embedded figures detection in autism and typical development: preliminary evidence of a double dissociation in relationships with visual search.
Individuals with autism show relatively strong performance on tasks that require them to identify the constituent parts of a visual stimulus. This is assumed to be the result of a bias towards processing the local elements in a display that follows from a weakened ability to integrate information at the global level. The results of the current study showed that, among children with autism, ability to locate a figure embedded in a larger stimulus was only related to performance on visual search trials where the target was identified by a unique perceptual feature. In contrast, control children's embedded figures performance was specifically related to their performance on visual search trials where the target was defined by a conjunction of features. This double dissociation suggests that enhanced performance on perceptual tasks by children with autism is not simply a consequence of a quantitative difference in ability to engage in global processing.
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, 8 Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1TN, UK. C.Jarrold@bristol.ac.uk
Christopher
C
Jarrold
Iain D
ID
Gilchrist
Alison
A
Bender
D000293:Adolescent; D001288:Attention; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000473:pathology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005556:Form Perception; D006801:Humans; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011930:Reaction Time; D014796:Visual Perception