Abstract
BackgroundWhether individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have impairments with biological motion perception has been debated. The present study examined the ability to identify point‐light‐displayed (PLD) human actions in neurotypical (NT) adults and adults with ASD.MethodTwenty‐seven adults with ASD (mean age = 28.36) and 30 NT adults (mean age = 22.45) were tested. Both groups viewed 10 different biological motion actions contacting an object/tool and 10 without making contact. Each action was presented twice, and participant's naming responses and reaction times were recorded.ResultsThe ASD group had a significantly lower total number of correct items (M = 29.30 ± 5.08 out of 40) and longer response time (M = 4550 ± 1442 ms) than NT group (M = 32.77 ± 2.78; M = 3556 ± 1148 ms). Both groups were better at naming the actions without objects (ASD group: 17.33 ± 2.30, NT group: 18.67 ± 1.30) than those with objects (ASD group: 11.96 ± 3.57, NT group: 14.10 ± 1.97). Correlation analyses showed that individuals with higher Autism‐spectrum Quotient scale scores tended to make more errors and responded more slowly.ConclusionAdults with ASD were able to identify human point‐light display biological motion actions much better than chance; however, they were less proficient compared with NT adults in terms of accuracy and speed, regardless of action type.
Highlights
Human beings demonstrate remarkable and robust visual sensitivity to the movements of other humans and non-human agents (Blake & Shiffrar 2007; Pinto & Shiffrar 2009)
Adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were able to identify human point-light display biological motion actions much better than chance; they were less proficient compared with NT adults in terms of accuracy and speed, regardless of action type
Dark-reared newborn chicks preferentially oriented to images of the heads of hens (Johnson & Horn 1988) and the point-light displays (PLDs) depicting the biological motion of a hen (Regolin et al 2000; Vallortigara et al 2005)
Summary
In a similar vein, van Boxtel et al (2017) examined biological motion perception involving different degrees of global processing in healthy population and found that individuals with higher AQ scores tended to perform poorly at recognising meaningful human interactions These findings provide converging evidence that the global processing of biological motion perception – retrieving the configuration of the acting agent from dynamically changing the shape of a body – seems to be affected in people with a high degree of ASD. The visual mechanisms for the local processing may constitute an innate and non-specific life detection system; whereas an acquired system may be responsible for processing the global shape of specific identifications of an agent and its actions ( see Chang & Troje 2009) Following this line of thinking, it may be that individuals with good social skills have accumulated substantial experiences in interacting with people and observing actions performed by other agents. Extending the study to different clinical populations (e.g. adults with personality disorders) and including aspects such as participant’s previous physical or visual experiences with the stimuli are potential avenues for future research
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