Less flexible perceptual learning of priors in adults with autism

Individuals with autism show non-adaptive relative weighting of perceptual prior and sensory reliability

“…Specifically, prior expectations, based in our case on long-term learned biases (the width–height illusion), were not adjusted to the measurement reliability on the width discrimination task. This reduced flexibility in autism in adjusting the weighting of the priors has been demonstrated in several recent studies, indicated by an overall slower learning of prior information (Soulières et al, 2011), slower updating of the prior by recent history of stimuli (Lieder et al, 2019), and a failure to flexibly adjust the prior precision to the context (Sapey-Triomphe et al, 2020). However, in all of these studies, differences in adjusting the priors and updating the relative reliance on the measurements for those with and without autism may be explained by potential differences in the learning rates of building the prior throughout the experiment.…”

“…It has been suggested that the high and inflexible precision of prediction errors may more naturally account for strong priors or expectations that individuals with autism may develop in particular contexts but do not generalize (Van de Cruys et al, 2014). Specifically, in simple visual discrimination tasks, individuals with ASD seem able to implicitly learn a prior mean of the presented stimuli but fail to flexibly adjust the prior precision to the context (Sapey-Triomphe et al, 2020). They have also been shown to overestimate the volatility of the sensory environment, at the expense of learning to build stable expectations (Lawson et al, 2017).…”

“…The rate of change and flexibility of the directive factor K may differ from that of the reliability factors. Thus, ASD failure to flexibly adjust the prior reliability to the context (Sapey-Triomphe et al, 2020), overall slower learning of prior information (Soulières et al, 2011), and slower updating of the prior by recent stimuli history (Lieder et al, 2019) can all be explained by a slow rate of change in K (while maintaining and timely updating of the underlying prior and likelihood reliability/uncertainty, perhaps similar to TD in some cases).…”

“…Changes in factor K may thus lead to evidence supporting both the reduced prior and the reduced sensitivity to sensory noise accounts of modulated perception in ASD. The rate of change and flexibility of the directive factor K may differ from that of the reliability factors. Thus, ASD failure to flexibly adjust the prior reliability to the context (Sapey-Triomphe et al, 2020), overall slower learning of prior information (Soulières et al, 2011), and slower updating of the prior by recent stimuli history (Lieder et al, 2019) can all be explained by a slow rate of change in K (while maintaining and timely updating of the underlying prior and likelihood reliability/uncertainty, perhaps similar to TD in some cases). The suggested model can be viewed as incorporating a second-order behavior beyond the Bayesian belief, thus representing second-order beliefs on the precision itself. By this account, there is a failure of beliefs (estimated precision) about beliefs (predictions), that is, a failure of a second-order metacognitive computation.…”