title: Face perception develops similarly across viewpoint in children and adolescents with and without autism spectrum disorder.
abstract: Atypical face perception has been associated with the socio-communicative difficulties that characterize autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Growing evidence, however, suggests that a widespread impairment in face perception is not as common as once thought. One important issue arising with the interpretation of this literature is the relationship between face processing and a more general perceptual tendency to focus on local rather than global information. Previous work has demonstrated that when discriminating faces presented from the same view, older adolescents and adults with ASD perform similarly to typically developing individuals. When faces are presented from different views, however, they perform more poorly-specifically, when access to local cues is minimized. In this study, we assessed the cross-sectional development of face identity discrimination across viewpoint using same- and different-view conditions in children and adolescents with and without ASD. Contrary to the findings in adults, our results revealed that all participants experienced greater difficulty identifying faces from different views than from same views, and demonstrated similar age-expected improvements in performance across tasks. These results suggest that differences in face discrimination across views may only emerge beyond the age of 15 years in ASD.
authors.affiliation: Perceptual Neuroscience Laboratory for Autism Spectrum Disorder and Development, McGill University, Montréal, Quebec, CanadaIntegrated Program in Neuroscience, McGill University, Montréal, Quebec, Canadajacalyn.guy@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Jacalyn
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Guy
authors.affiliation: Educational Neuroscience Research Centre, Health and Special Education, Emirates College for Advanced Education, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
authors.forename: Claudine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Habak
authors.affiliation: Centre for Vision Research, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Hugh R
authors.initials: HR
authors.lastname: Wilson
authors.affiliation: Centre d'excellence en Troubles envahissants du développement de l'Université de Montréal (CETEDUM), Hôpital Rivière-des-Prairies, Montréal, Quebec, Canada.
authors.forename: Laurent
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Mottron
authors.affiliation: Perceptual Neuroscience Laboratory for Autism Spectrum Disorder and Development, McGill University, Montréal, Quebec, CanadaCentre d'excellence en Troubles envahissants du développement de l'Université de Montréal (CETEDUM), Hôpital Rivière-des-Prairies, Montréal, Quebec, CanadaSchool/Applied Child Psychology, Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology, McGill University, Montréal, Quebec, Canada.
authors.forename: Armando
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bertone
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000067877:Autism Spectrum Disorder / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002648:Child; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003463:Cues; D000066499:Facial Recognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male