Global and local visual processing in autism: An objective assessment approach.
Eye-tracking shows autistic kids miss the big picture on illusion tasks, but their detail focus is typical.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team used eye-tracking to watch how kids looked at Kanizsa figures. These are shapes that look whole even though parts are missing.
They compared children with autism to same-age peers without autism. The goal was to see who noticed the full shape first.
What they found
Kids with autism looked less at the center of the illusory shape. This means they picked up the global picture more slowly.
Both groups spent the same time on small details. Local processing was not stronger in the autism group.
How this fits with other research
Bölte et al. (2007) saw weaker gestalt in autistic adults, so the child result lines up. Storch et al. (2012) found no global gap in autistic adults, but that study tested adults, not kids. Age seems to explain the clash.
Koldewyn et al. (2013) showed autistic children can process globally when told to, they just prefer local. Kritika’s eye data now proves the global step truly happens less, even though the skill is there.
Alonso Soriano et al. (2015) found no local bias in autistic teens using similar lab tasks. Together the papers hint the global dip is clearest in childhood and fades by adolescence.
Why it matters
You now have an easy, five-minute eye-tracking probe for global perception. If a client ignores the whole shape, add prompts that pull attention to the big picture before teaching complex social scenes or reading maps. Pair the prompt with praise when the child’s eyes land on the center to build that global habit.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
We examined global and local visual processing in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) via a match-to-sample task using Kanizsa illusory contours (KIC). School-aged children with ASD (n = 28) and age-matched typically developing controls (n = 22; 7-13 years) performed a sequential match-to-sample between a solid shape (sample) and two illusory alternatives. We tracked eye gaze and behavioral performance in two task conditions: one with and one without local interference from background noise elements. While analyses revealed lower accuracy and longer reaction time in ASD in the condition with local interference only, eye tracking robustly captured ASD-related global atypicalities across both conditions. Specifically, relative to controls, children with ASD showed decreased fixations to KIC centers, indicating reduced global perception. Notably, they did not differ from controls in regard to fixations to local elements or touch response location. These results indicate impaired global perception in the absence of heightened local processing in ASD. They also underscore the utility of eye-tracking measures as objective indices of global/local visual processing strategies in ASD. Autism Res 2017, 10: 1392-1404. © 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.1782