Postural effects of motion vision in young autistic children

Spatial Frequency and Face Processing in Children with Autism and Asperger Syndrome

“…These authors showed that autistic children exhibited higher thresholds in motion coherence perception (involving the dorsal pathway) than typically developing children, whereas these differences did not emerge for the formcoherence threshold (involving the ventral pathway). Also consistent with a dorsal pathway impairment in the autistic population are two studies revealing that autistic children are severely impaired in visually perceived environmental motion (Gepner, Mestre, Masson, & de Schonen, 1995;Gepner & Mestre, 2002).…”

The visual perception of motion by observers with autism spectrum disorders: A review and synthesis

“…Finally, elevated motion coherence thresholds in observers with highfunctioning autism (HFA), but not AS, have also been documented with Glass patterns (Glass, 1969), randomized dot arrays depicting correlated dot pairs (Spencer & O'Brien, 2006;Tsermentseli et al, 2008). In sum, the results of eight psychophysical studies (Davis et al, 2006;Gepner & Mestre, 2002;Gepner et al, 1995;Milne et al, 2002;Pellicano et al, 2005;Spencer & O'Brien, 2006;Spencer et al, 2000;Tsermentseli et al, 2008) converge in suggesting that the visual analysis of motion, whether in translating random dot patterns or expanding and contracting luminance gratings, is compromised in observers with ASD (Table 1). Because the perception of coherent motion in these random dot displays requires a global integration of motion information across many points, the threshold atypicalities described above may be consistent with a decreased reliance on global motion processes and/ or an increased reliance on local motion processes.…”

“…The first published report suggesting that observers with ASD show deficits in their visual perception of motion involved a study of children's postural reactions to optic flow (Gepner, Mestre, Masson, & de Schonen, 1995). Optic flow refers to the pattern of dynamic information that is projected onto the retinae whenever individuals move through their environment (Gibson, 1950).…”

Motion and Form Coherence Detection in Autistic Spectrum Disorder: Relationship to Motor Control and 2:4 Digit Ratio

“…Abnormal response to visual motion was first reported by Gepner et al, who found that children with autism were less posturally reactive to motion information carried in optic flow than controls (Gepner & Mestre, 2002a, b;Gepner, Mestre, Masson, & De-Schonen, 1995). This result has been followed by additional data, which suggests that children with autism are impaired at recognizing biological motion (Blake, Turner, Smoski, Pozdol, & Stone, 2003) and in detecting coherent motion from noise (Milne et al, 2002;Spencer et al, 2000).…”