title: Intact perception but abnormal orientation towards face-like objects in young children with ASD.
abstract: There is ample behavioral evidence of diminished orientation towards faces as well as the presence of face perception impairments in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but the underlying mechanisms of these deficits are still unclear. We used face-like object stimuli that have been shown to evoke pareidolia in typically developing (TD) individuals to test the effect of a global face-like configuration on orientation and perceptual processes in young children with ASD and age-matched TD controls. We show that TD children were more likely to look first towards upright face-like objects than children with ASD, showing that a global face-like configuration elicit a stronger orientation bias in TD children as compared to children with ASD. However, once they were looking at the stimuli, both groups spent more time exploring the upright face-like object, suggesting that they both perceived it as a face. Our results are in agreement with abnormal social orienting in ASD, possibly due to an abnormal tuning of the subcortical pathway, leading to poor orienting and attention towards faces. Our results also indicate that young children with ASD can perceive a generic face holistically, such as face-like objects, further demonstrating holistic processing of faces in ASD.
authors.affiliation: URI Octogone, University of Toulouse, 5 Allée Antonio Machado, 31058 Toulouse Cedex 9, France.
authors.forename: Quentin
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Guillon
authors.affiliation: URI Octogone, University of Toulouse, 5 Allée Antonio Machado, 31058 Toulouse Cedex 9, France.|Institut Universitaire de France (IUF) 1, Rue Descartes, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France.
authors.forename: Bernadette
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Rogé
authors.affiliation: URI Octogone, University of Toulouse, 5 Allée Antonio Machado, 31058 Toulouse Cedex 9, France.
authors.forename: Mohammad H
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Afzali
authors.affiliation: URI Octogone, University of Toulouse, 5 Allée Antonio Machado, 31058 Toulouse Cedex 9, France.
authors.forename: Sophie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Baduel
authors.affiliation: URI Octogone, University of Toulouse, 5 Allée Antonio Machado, 31058 Toulouse Cedex 9, France.
authors.forename: Jeanne
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kruck
authors.affiliation: URI Octogone, University of Toulouse, 5 Allée Antonio Machado, 31058 Toulouse Cedex 9, France.|Harvard Medical School/MGH/MIT, Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Building 75, 3rd Avenue, Charlestown, MA 02129, USA.|Gillberg Neuropsychiatry Center, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
authors.forename: Nouchine
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Hadjikhani
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D000067877:Autism Spectrum Disorder / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D014796:Visual Perception