Abstract
Perceptual constancy strongly relies on adaptive gain control mechanisms, which shift perception as a function of recent sensory history. Here we examined the extent to which individual differences in magnitude of adaptation aftereffects for social and non-social directional cues are related to autistic traits and sensory sensitivity in healthy participants (Experiment 1); and also whether adaptation for social and non-social directional cues is differentially impacted in adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) relative to neurotypical (NT) controls (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, individuals with lower susceptibility to adaptation aftereffects, i.e. more ‘veridical’ perception, showed higher levels of autistic traits across social and non-social stimuli. Furthermore, adaptation aftereffects were predictive of sensory sensitivity. In Experiment 2, only adaptation to eye-gaze was diminished in adults with ASD, and this was related to difficulties categorizing eye-gaze direction at baseline. Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) scores negatively predicted lower adaptation for social (head and eye-gaze direction) but not non-social (chair) stimuli. These results suggest that the relationship between adaptation and the broad socio-cognitive processing style captured by ‘autistic traits’ may be relatively domain-general, but in adults with ASD diminished adaptation is only apparent where processing is most severely impacted, such as the perception of social attention cues.
Highlights
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterised by social-communication difficulties and rigid or repetitive behaviour and restricted interests (American Psychiatric Association, 2013)
There are a wide range of clinical phenotypes in ASD and it has been proposed that a wider continuum of individual differences in social-cognitive ability extends into the typical population and can be indexed by inter-individual differences in measures of autistic traits (Baron-Cohen et al, 2001a; Baron-Cohen et al, 2001b; Frith, 1991)
In Experiment 1 we first we examine whether autistic traits negatively predict adaptation magnitude for two different types of social attention cue and a non-social directional cue signalled by a complex visual stimuli
Summary
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterised by social-communication difficulties and rigid or repetitive behaviour and restricted interests (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). There is great interest in how social stimuli, such as eye-gaze, are processed in ASD (Nation and Penny, 2008), but there is a growing body of work examining basic non-social visual processing (Simmons et al, 2009). Perception of both social and non-social visual cues is influenced by mechanisms that produce experience-dependent modulation of visual sensitivity; known as adaptation (Webster, 2011). This mechanism warrants further study if we wish to understand commonalities, and differences, between basic sensory and social aspects of visual processing in ASD
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