Reduced perceptual specialization in autism: Evidence from the other-race face effect.

Abstract

Emerging accounts of autism suggest that flexible and broadly tuned perceptual representations, presumably resulting from reduced specialization, may underlie atypical perception. Here, we examined the other-race effect (ORE) to study face processing specialization arising from specific experience with own-race faces. Face discrimination was tested for own-and other-race faces in typically developed individuals and in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). For each race, faces were morphed to vary discrimination difficulty, and orientation was manipulated to examine inversion effects. The ASD group displayed overall lower sensitivity and reduced inversion effects in processing faces. Importantly, the processing advantage for own-race faces was substantially smaller in this group, resulting specifically from the reduced specialization for the own-race faces. Moreover, the typical larger inversion effect for Caucasian faces was not observed in the ASD group; sensitivity to orientation was smaller and equivalent for the two face races. These more broadly tuned representations in autism may account for the overall weaker representations of faces and suggest, more broadly, that a failure in perceptual specialization may underlie atypical perception in autism.

The Association Between Autistic Traits and Mental Well-Being

“…This overestimation of environmental volatility combined with a preference for sameness (rigidity) could be detrimental to forming stable social relationships. Also detrimental to social competence would be perceptual impairments in facial recognition, which also appear to generalize to non-clinical adults with greater expression of autistic traits (Hadad et al 2019). Future research should examine the possibly moderating role of cognitive and perceptual effects on self-perceived social competence in the association between aloofness and mental well-being.…”

Evidence of an Own-Age Bias in Facial Emotion Recognition for Adolescents With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…Findings from the ORE literature suggest that individuals with ASD may indeed be sensitive to cumulative visual experience with faces, reflected in greater performance accuracy for own-compared to other-race in tasks of facial recognition memory (44,45). Although, this has not always been replicated (46,47). Furthermore, it remains unknown whether such effects extend to tasks of FER, where individuals with ASD demonstrate increased impairment (1).…”

“…Based on previous findings (11), it was predicted that adolescents without ASD would demonstrate an own-age bias. Due to conflicting evidence on whether individuals with ASD are as sensitive to visual experience with faces (27,44,45,47), analyses related to how the magnitude of any observed OAB would be attenuated by ASD status and severity or differ by emotion were considered exploratory in order to support future hypothesis generation; thus, no specific predictions were made at this time.…”

Does culture shape face perception in autism? Cross‐cultural evidence of the own‐race advantage from the UK and Japan

“…In summary, the evidence regarding the presence or absence of an ORA in ASD is mixed. Chien et al () report that children with ASD lack the typical ORA, as do Hadad et al () for adults with ASD; Wilson et al () find this only in a subgroup of children with ASD with age‐inappropriate face recognition ability; Yi, Quinn, Feng, et al () report a lack of an ORA in ASD also, but at the same time do not find it in TD children, while their study using the same task with adults with ASD shows a typical ORA at the same time that TD comparison adults do not. Some of these inconsistences may be due to the fact each study involved different age ranges (Wilson et al, 2001 6–16 years; Chien et al, 6–10 years; Yi, Quinn, Feng, et al, 5–10 years; Yi, Quinn, Fan, et al, mean 21 years and Hadad et al, 19–35 years).…”

“…Recently, Hadad, Schwatrz and Binur () provided strong evidence of a reduced ORA in adults with ASD. Their study of adults with and without autism (mean age in years: TD 25.6; ASD 23.7) involved a face discrimination task with morphed face stimuli.…”