Increased influence of prior choices on perceptual decisions in autism.

Helen Feigin,Adam Zaidel,Shir Shalom-Sperber,Ditza A Zachor

doi:10.7554/elife.61595

Helen Feigin, Adam Zaidel + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.7554/elife.61595

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Abstract

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) manifests sensory and perceptual atypicalities. Recent theories suggest that these may reflect a reduced influence of prior information in ASD. Some studies have found reduced adaptation to recent sensory stimuli in ASD. However, the effects of prior stimuli and prior perceptual choices can counteract one-another. Here, we investigated this using two different tasks (in two different cohorts): (i) visual location discrimination and (ii) multisensory (visual-vestibular) heading discrimination. We fit the data using a logistic regression model to dissociate the specific effects of prior stimuli and prior choices. In both tasks, perceptual decisions were biased toward recent choices. Notably, the 'attractive' effect of prior choices was significantly larger in ASD (in both tasks and cohorts), while there was no difference in the influence of prior stimuli. These results challenge theories of reduced priors in ASD, and rather suggest an increased consistency bias for perceptual decisions in ASD.

Highlights

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is primarily characterized by impairments in social skills and by restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior (American Psychiatric Association, 2013)
The main aim of this study was to investigate whether the influence of recent prior information on perceptual decision-making is altered in ASD
We found a stronger effect of recent prior information on perceptual decisions in ASD compared to controls

Summary

Introduction

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is primarily characterized by impairments in social skills and by restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Classic theories suggest that atypical perceptual function in ASD reflects a shift in favor of processing local (or low-level) sensory details, over integration of those details into a global (or highlevel) percept. This may reflect (non-exclusively): impaired global processing (Shah and Frith, 1983; Frith and Happe, 1994; Behrmann et al, 2006; Booth and Happe, 2018), superior local processing (Plaisted et al, 2003; Mottron et al, 2006; Mottron and Burack, 2021), and/or a preference for detail (Plaisted et al, 1999; Happeand Frith, 2006; Koldewyn et al, 2013). It has been proposed that the bias toward low-level processing in ASD, as well as other perceptual and sensory atypicalities, such as hyper- or hypo-sensitivity to sensory stimuli (Rogers and Ozonoff, 2005), may be explained by altered perceptual inference (Pellicano and Burr, 2012; Friston et al, 2013; Lawson et al, 2014)

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