title: Brief report: Reduced grouping interference in children with ASD: evidence from a Multiple Object Tracking Task.
abstract: This study was inspired by the more locally oriented processing style in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). A modified multiple object tracking (MOT) task was administered to a group of children with and without ASD. Participants not only had to distinguish moving targets from distracters, but they also had to track targets when they were visually grouped to distracters, a manipulation which has a detrimental effect on tracking performance in adults. MOT performance in the ASD group was also affected by grouping, but this effect was significantly reduced. This result highlights how the reduced bias towards more global processing in ASD could influence further stages of cognition by altering the way in which attention selects information for further processing.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, KU Leuven, Tiensestraat 102, Box 3711, 3000, Leuven, Belgium, kris.evers@psy.kuleuven.be.
authors.forename: Kris
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Evers
authors.forename: Lee
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: de-Wit
authors.forename: Ruth
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Van der Hallen
authors.forename: Birgitt
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Haesen
authors.forename: Jean
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Steyaert
authors.forename: Ilse
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Noens
authors.forename: Johan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wagemans
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D002648:Child; D002659:Child Development Disorders, Pervasive / Q000523:psychology*; D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis