Atypical perception in autism: A failure of perceptual specialization?
Autistic adults flexibly switch visual cues instead of locking into one strategy.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Hadad et al. (2017) asked adults with and without autism to sort visual patterns.
The patterns varied by color and shape.
The team watched which strategy each group used to tell the patterns apart.
What they found
Typical adults picked one strategy and stuck with it.
Autistic adults switched strategies and used both color and shape cues.
Their perception was flexible but less specialized.
How this fits with other research
Bölte et al. (2007) saw weaker gestalt skills in autistic adults.
Sheva’s results fit that picture: less specialization means weaker overall gestalt.
Nayar et al. (2017) tested autistic kids and found poor global sight.
Sheva tested adults and saw mixed, flexible styles.
The gap looks like a developmental shift, not a clash.
Storch et al. (2012) found no global-local deficit in young autistic adults.
Sheva’s mixed findings may reflect the wider age range they tested.
Why it matters
When you teach visual skills, expect autistic adults to hop between cues.
Build lessons that let them use color, shape, or both.
Do not assume they will lock into one style.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
We examined whether reduced perceptual specialization underlies atypical perception in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) testing classifications of stimuli that differ either along integral dimensions (prototypical integral dimensions of value and chroma), or along separable dimensions (prototypical separable dimensions of value and size). Current models of the perception of individuals with an ASD would suggest that on these tasks, individuals with ASD would be as, or more, likely to process dimensions as separable, regardless of whether they represented separable or integrated dimensions. In contrast, reduced specialization would propose that individuals with ASD would respond in a more integral manner to stimuli that differ along separable dimensions, and at the same time, respond in a more separable manner to stimuli that differ along integral dimensions. A group of nineteen adults diagnosed with high functioning ASD and seventeen typically developing participants of similar age and IQ, were tested on speeded and restricted classifications tasks. Consistent with the reduced specialization account, results show that individuals with ASD do not always respond more analytically than typically developed (TD) observers: Dimensions identified as integral for TD individuals evoke less integral responding in individuals with ASD, while those identified as separable evoke less analytic responding. These results suggest that perceptual representations are more broadly tuned and more flexibly represented in ASD. Autism Res 2017, 10: 1510-1522. © 2017 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2017 · doi:10.1002/aur.1800