title: Is the ability to integrate parts into wholes affected in autism spectrum disorder?
abstract: There is considerable debate about whether people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are biased toward local information and whether this disrupts their ability to integrate two complex shapes elements into a single figure. Moreover, few have examined the relationship between integration ability and ASD symptom severity. Adolescent/adult males with ASD and age and IQ-matched controls were compared on their performance of a simple silhouette-to-shape matching task and a higher-order shape-integration task. Relative to basic silhouette-to-shape matching, ASD participants were disproportionately slower than controls on shape-integration. Moreover, this relative slowing correlated with increased symptom severity in ASD participants. These findings support the notion that integrating local information is disproportionately more challenging in ASD; this weakness may play a role in ASD symptomatology.
authors.affiliation: Brain Behavior and Cognition Program, Department of Psychology, Boston University, 64 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA, 02215, USA, flafe@bu.edu.
authors.forename: Olufemi
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Olu-Lafe
authors.forename: Jacqueline
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Liederman
authors.forename: Helen
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Tager-Flusberg
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002659:Child Development Disorders, Pervasive / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D055815:Young Adult
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