Brief Report: Eye-Movement Patterns During an Embedded Figures Test in Children with ASD

Abstract

The present study examined fixation frequency and duration during an EFT in an effort to better understand the attentional and perceptual processes by which individuals with ASD achieve accelerated EFT performance. In particular, we aimed to elucidate differences in the patterns of eyemovement in ASD and TD children, thus providing evidence relevant to the competing weak central coherence and enhanced perceptual functioning theories. Consistent with prior EFT studies, we found accelerated RT in children with ASD. No group differences were seen for fixation frequency, but the ASD group made significantly shorter fixations compared to TD group. Eye-movement results indicate that RT advantage in ASD is related to both weak central coherence and enhanced perceptual functioning. Keywordsautism; reaction time; visual attention; visual perception; eye movement; eye fixation Atypical visual-spatial perception in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been exemplified by enhanced performance on a variety of experimental tasks (see Dakin & Frith, 2005, for review , 2006). According to the WCC, accelerated performance during the EFT is a consequence of differences in implicit processing style; individuals with ASD perceive local parts, whereas typically developing (TD) individuals form a global percept before attending to the local elements of the global whole. Alternatively, Mottron and colleagues (2006) have proposed that accelerated EFT performance in ASD is the result of enhanced perceptual functioning (EPF). The EPF theory hypothesizes that local bias develops, not from a deficit in processing global information, but rather from superior low-level perceptual processes.The present study examined fixation frequency and duration during an EFT in an effort to better understand the attentional and perceptual processes by which children with ASD achieve accelerated performance. In particular, we aimed to elucidate differences in the patterns of eyemovement in ASD and TD children, thus providing evidence relevant to the competing WCC and EPF theories. We used a modified version of an EFT designed by Manjaly and colleagues (2007) which included both embedded figure and baseline perceptual control conditions. We hypothesized that response time (RT) increases in the test compared to the baseline condition would be less pronounced in ASD compared to TD children. A further hypothesis was prompted by a recent study by Kemner et al. (2007), who suggested that fewer and/or shorter fixations underlie enhanced visual search in ASD. Analogously, we hypothesized that superior EFT performance in ASD would be the result of a reduced number and/or duration of fixations. Methods ParticipantsFifteen school-age children with ASD and 11 TD children were recruited for the current study. Data from three children with ASD were incomplete due to noncompliance. The final sample thus included 12 children with ASD, all of whom met DSM-IV-TR (APA, 2000) criteria for autism spectrum disorder, and an age-and nonverbal IQ-matched...

Restricted and Repetitive Behaviours, Sensory Processing and Cognitive Style in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

“…triangle or house shape) within a larger complex abstract design. The time taken to correctly spot the simple shape in the 12 complex pictures is recorded, and has been shown to distinguish individuals with autism from controls (De Jonge et al 2006;Keehn et al 2008). Following the modified procedure of Shah and Frith (1983) and Ropar and Mitchell (2001), the children were allowed to indicate the hidden figure by using their finger or a stylus pen without ink to trace the simple shape.…”

Motion and pattern cortical potentials in adults with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder

“…Poor performance in this motion domain suggests a difference in the processing of simple motion stimuli. In addition ASD individuals outperform typical observers in static tasks such as visual search [15][16][17] and embedded figures tasks [14,18,19] which support a difficulty with grasping the gestalt and being drawn into the finer detail of objects. Thus, according to WCC theory, there is a natural cognitive bias towards the local over the global perspective and superior performance in tasks requiring the detection of detail.…”

Reaction Time of Children with and without Autistic Spectrum Disorders

“…The TD group exhibited faster reaction times (RT) to targets occurring as novel search elements, the ASD group performed similarly in target new and old conditions, indicating impaired attentional prioritization of novel onsets. However, Keehn and Associates [13] Raymaekers, Van Der Meere, and Roeyers [1] found that adults with high functioning autism (HFA) exhibit problems with response inhibition when go/nogo stimuli were presented rapidly, but not when stimuli were presented slow. It was found that performance in adults with HFA was the same as in the control group in the condition with a slow and medium presentation rate, but that it decreased in the condition with a fast presentation rate: many errors of commission were made in this condition.…”