Visual Noise Effect on Contour Integration and Gaze Allocation in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

Contradictory results have been obtained in the studies that compare contour integration abilities in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) and typically developing individuals. The present study aimed to explore the limiting factors of contour integration ability in ASD and verify the role of the external visual noise by a combination of psychophysical and eye-tracking approaches. To this aim, 24 children and adolescents with ASD and 32 age-matched participants with typical development had to detect the presence of contour embedded among similar Gabor elements in a Yes/No procedure. The results obtained showed that the responses in the group with ASD were not only less accurate but also were significantly slower compared to the control group at all noise levels. The detection performance depended on the group differences in addition to the effect of the intellectual functioning of the participants from both groups. The comparison of the agreement and accuracy of the responses in the double-pass experiment showed that the results of the participants with ASD are more affected by the increase of the external noise. It turned out that the internal noise depends on the level of the added external noise: the difference between the two groups was non-significant at the low external noise and significant at the high external noise. In accordance with the psychophysical results, the eye-tracking data indicated a larger gaze allocation area in the group with autism. These findings may imply higher positional uncertainty in ASD due to the inability to maintain the information of the contour location from previous presentations and interference from noise elements in the contour vicinity. Psychophysical and eye-tracking data suggest lower efficiency in using stimulus information in the ASD group that could be caused by fixation instability and noisy and unstable perceptual template that affects noise filtering.

Degraded tactile coding in the Cntnap2 mouse model of autism

“…One of the prominent sensory features of ASD is the difficulty in detecting speech in background noise (Alcántara et al, 2004; Schelinski and von Kriegstein, 2020). While this is likely to partly reflect a higher level of endogenous neuronal noise (internal noise) in ASD (Rubenstein and Merzenich, 2003; Simmons et al, 2009), abnormalities in filtering out background sensory noise (external noise) may also occur in ASD individuals (Mihaylova et al, 2021; Park et al, 2017), and may reflect increased sensory-evoked spiking and reduced temporal precision of sensory signals at subcortical levels (Nakajima et al, 2019). Our finding that background tactile noise further degrades map topography (Fig.…”

Does stochastic resonance improve performance for individuals with higher autism-spectrum quotient?

“…The higher levels of internal noise in ASD provide a convenient explanation of decreased performance on various tasks such as in contour integration tasks (Mihaylova et al, 2021), second-order (or complex) detection tasks (Bertone et al, 2005), and orientational discrimination tasks (Park et al, 2017).…”

On interference between target and noise in visual stimuli

“…Many visual scientists have made use of visual stimuli to which noise has been added (e.g., Aihara et al, 2008;Attwell et al, 2021;Barthelme & Mamassian, 2009;Beattie et al, 2011;Barnhart & Goldinger, 2013;Chen et al, 2019;Coutanche &Thompson-Schill, 2015;Dakin et al, 2018: Dewhurst et al, 2018Emadi & Esteki, 2013;Gold, 2015;Greve et al, 2017;Hall et al, 2014;Hall & McAnany, 2017;Jones et al, 2003;Kim & Alais, 2021;Kuniecki et al, 2017;Kruger et al, 1986;Legge et al, 1987;Luber et al, 2020;Manahilov et al, 2003;Mareschal et al, 2010;Mihaylova et al, 2021;Milner & Michalski, 2003;Pardhan et al, 1996;Partosetal., 2016;Pelli et al, 2004Pelli et al, , 2006Pelli et al, , 2009Rainer et al, 2004;Salmela & Laurinen, 2009). The general notion behind the use of such stimuli has been that they will tell us something about vision or the visual system.…”