title: The development of individuation in autism.
abstract: Evidence suggests that people with autism rely less on holistic visual information than typical adults. The current studies examine this by investigating core visual processes that contribute to holistic processing--namely, individuation and element grouping--and how they develop in participants with autism and typically developing (TD) participants matched for age, IQ, and gender. Individuation refers to the ability to "see" approximately four elements simultaneously; grouping elements can modify how many elements can be individuated. We examined these processes using two well-established paradigms, rapid enumeration and multiple object tracking (MOT). In both tasks, a performance limit of four elements in typical adults is thought to reflect individuation capacity. Participants with autism displayed a smaller individuation capacity than TD controls, regardless of whether they were enumerating static elements or tracking moving ones. To manipulate the holistic information available via element grouping, elements were arranged into a design in rapid enumeration, or moved together in MOT. Performance in participants with autism was affected to a similar degree as TD participants by element grouping, whether the manipulation helped or hurt performance, consistent with evidence that some types of gestalt/grouping information are processed typically in autism. There was substantial development from childhood to adolescence in the speed of individuation in those with autism, but not from adolescence to adulthood, a pattern distinct from TD participants. These results reveal how core visual processes function in autism, and provide insight into the architecture of vision (i.e., individuation appears distinct from visual strengths in autism, such as visual search).
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA. ohearnk@upmc.edu
authors.forename: Kirsten
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: O'Hearn
authors.forename: Steven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Franconeri
authors.forename: Catherine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wright
authors.forename: Nancy
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Minshew
authors.forename: Beatriz
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Luna
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001244:Association; D001288:Attention; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D005863:Gestalt Theory; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008433:Mathematics; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011340:Problem Solving; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time; D012691:Serial Learning; D014705:Verbal Behavior