Atypical Biological Motion Perception in Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Local Motion and Global Configuration Processing

Abstract

The ability to perceive biological motion (BM) is crucial for human survival and social interaction. Plentiful studies have found impaired BM perception in autism spectrum disorder characterized by deficits in social interaction. Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) often exhibit similar deficits in social interaction, but few studies have investigated BM perception in ADHD. Here, we compared the differences in abilities to process local kinematic and global configurational cues, two fundamental abilities of BM perception, between typically developing (TD) and ADHD children. Then, we further investigated the relationship between BM perception and social interaction skills measured by the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) and examined the contributions of potential factors (e.g., gender, age, attention and intelligence) to BM perception. Results revealed that children with ADHD exhibited atypical BM perception with a clear dissociation between local and global BM information processing. Local BM processing ability was largely related to social interaction skills, whereas global BM processing ability would significantly improve with age. Critically, general BM perception (i.e., both local and global BM cues) was affected by sustained attention ability in ADHD. This relationship was mainly mediated by Reasoning Intelligence. These findings elucidate the atypical biological motion perception in ADHD and the potential factors related to BM perception. Moreover, this study provides new evidence for local BM perception as a hallmark of social cognition, and advances the comprehensive understanding of the distinct roles of local and global processing in BM perception and social cognitive disorders.