The Autism-Spectrum Quotient and Visual Search: Shallow and Deep Autistic Endophenotypes.
A high Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) score (Baron-Cohen et al. in J Autism Dev Disord 31(1):5-17, 2001) is increasingly used as a proxy in empirical studies of perceptual mechanisms in autism. Several investigations have assessed perception in non-autistic people measured for AQ, claiming the same relationship exists between performance on perceptual tasks in high-AQ individuals as observed in autism. We question whether the similarity in performance by high-AQ individuals and autistics reflects the same underlying perceptual cause in the context of two visual search tasks administered to a large sample of typical individuals assessed for AQ. Our results indicate otherwise and that deploying the AQ as a proxy for autism introduces unsubstantiated assumptions about high-AQ individuals, the endophenotypes they express, and their relationship to Autistic Spectrum Conditions (ASC) individuals.
Cambridge Laboratory for Research into Autism (CLaRA), Department of Psychology, Free School Lane, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB2 3RQ, UK. blg24@cam.ac.uk.
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Gregory
Cambridge Laboratory for Research into Autism (CLaRA), Department of Psychology, Free School Lane, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB2 3RQ, UK.
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Plaisted-Grant
D000293:Adolescent; D000067877:Autism Spectrum Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D002659:Child Development Disorders, Pervasive / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D058068:Endophenotypes; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
Autistic endophenotype; Discrimination; High-AQ; Visual search