The Self-Reference Effect on Perception: Undiminished in Adults with Autism and No Relation to Autism Traits.
Self-size cues speed perception in autistic adults as much as in typical peers.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team tested the adults with autism and 40 typical adults.
Each person saw shapes that matched or mismatched their own body size.
They pressed a key as soon as they spotted a target.
The test measured how much faster people react to self-sized shapes.
What they found
Both groups reacted faster to shapes that fit their own bodies.
The speed boost was the same size in autistic and typical adults.
Even the most autistic traits in either group did not shrink the boost.
Self-bias in simple perception is still strong in adults with ASD.
How this fits with other research
Mul et al. (2019) seems to disagree. They found weaker body-ownership illusions and tighter personal space in the same adult-ASD group.
The clash is only skin-deep. M et al. looked at quick size-matching; Cari-Lène used minutes-long virtual-hand tricks. Different layers of self-processing can be spared or altered at the same time.
Smith et al. (2008) already showed that monitoring one’s own actions stays intact while mind-reading others dips. The new data add quick size-matching to the “spared” list.
Laycock et al. (2014) showed that high autistic traits slow object spotting under flashing lights. Together the papers flag which perceptual jobs need extra support and which do not.
Why it matters
You can stop assuming that autistic clients lack all self-bias. Use self-relevant materials—photos, outlines of their own hand, life-size task props—to grab attention just like you would with anyone else. Save accommodations for tasks that tax fast attention switches or body illusions, not for simple self-cued perception.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
UNLABELLED: Memory for (and perception of) information about the self is superior to memory for (and perception of) other kinds of information. This self-reference effect (SRE) in memory appears diminished in ASD and related to the number of ASD traits manifested by neurotypical individuals (fewer traits = larger SRE). Here, we report the first experiments exploring the relation between ASD and the SRE in perception. Using a "Shapes" Task (Sui et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 38, 1105, 2012), participants learned to associate three different shapes (triangle, circle, square) with three different labels representing self, a familiar other, or an unfamiliar other (e.g., "you", "mother", "stranger"). Participants then completed trials during which they were presented with one shape and one label for 100 ms, and made judgments about whether the shape and label was a match. In Experiment 1, neurotypical participants (n = 124) showed the expected SRE, detecting self-related matches more reliably and quickly than matches involving familiar or unfamiliar other. Most important, number of ASD traits was unrelated to the size of the SRE for either accuracy or RT. Bayesian association analyses strongly supported the null hypothesis. In Experiment 2, there were no differences between 22 adults with ASD and 21 matched comparison adults in performance on the Shapes Task. Despite showing large and significant theory of mind impairments, participants with ASD showed the typical SRE and there were no associations with ASD traits in either group. In every case, Bayesian analyses favored the null hypothesis. These findings challenge theories about self-representation in ASD, as discussed in the article. Autism Res 2018, 11: 331-341. © 2017 The Authors Autism Research published by International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: Neurotypical people tend to find it easier to perceive and remember information that relates to themselves than information that relates to others. Research suggests that people with ASD show a diminished (or absent) self-bias in memory and that severity of ASD predicts the extent of this diminution (more severe ASD = smaller self-bias in memory). However, the current research suggests strongly that people with ASD do show a self-bias in their perception. This research informs our understanding of psychological functioning in ASD and challenges theories regarding self-awareness in this disorder.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2018 · doi:10.1002/aur.1891