Perceptual decision-making in autism as assessed by “spot the difference” visual cognition tasks

Abstract

Discriminating between similar figures proves to be a remarkably demanding task due to the limited capacity of our visual cognitive processes. Here we examine how perceptual inference and decision-making are modulated by differences arising from neurodiversity. A large sample of autistic (n = 140) and typical (n = 147) participants completed two forced choice similarity judgement tasks online. Each task consisted of “match” (identical figures) and “mismatch” (subtle differences between figures) conditions. Signal detection theory analyses indicated a response bias by the autism group during conditions of uncertainty. More specifically, autistic participants were more likely to choose the “mismatch” option, thus leading to more hits on the “mismatch” condition, but also more false alarms on the “match” condition. These results suggest differences in response strategies during perceptual decision-making in autism.

The “Tetris effect”: Testing the implicit drive for perceptual cohesion in autism

“…However, more recent work has suggested that autistic individuals may be slower to process global wholes (Koldewyn et al, 2013), or may merely be less inclined to use global-to-local processing strategies during visuospatial tasks (Van der Hallen et al, 2015). In line with this, autistic individuals have been found to differ in their response strategies during two alternative forced-choice figure dis-embedding tasks (Jassim et al, 2022). To minimise the role of explicit cognitive strategies, we propose that the use of indirect measurements may better capture the automatic and implicit aspects of perception in autism.…”