title: Attention to low- and high-spatial frequencies in categorizing facial identities, emotions and gender in children with autism.
abstract: This study was aimed at investigating face categorization strategies in children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD). Performance of 17 children with ASD was compared to that of 17 control children in a face-matching task, including hybrid faces (composed of two overlapping faces of different spatial bandwidths) and either low- or high-pass filtered faces. Participants were asked to match faces on the basis of identity, emotion or gender. Results revealed that children with ASD used the same strategies as controls when matching faces by gender. By contrast, in the identity and the emotion conditions, children with ASD showed a high-pass bias (i.e., preference for local information), contrary to controls. Consistent with previous studies on autism, these findings suggest that children with ASD do use atypical (local-oriented) strategies to process faces.
authors: Mediterranean Institute of Cognitive Neurosciences CNRS, Marseille, France. deruelle@incm.cnrs-mrs.fr
authors: Christine
authors: C
authors: Deruelle
authors: Cécilie
authors: C
authors: Rondan
authors: Xavier
authors: X
authors: Salle-Collemiche
authors: Delphine
authors: D
authors: Bastard-Rosset
authors: David
authors: D
authors: Da Fonséca
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D018592:Cross-Over Studies; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D004644:Emotions; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology; D005145:Face; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011340:Problem Solving / Q000502:physiology*; D012016:Reference Values; D012737:Sex Factors