Lack of implicit visual perspective taking in adult males with autism spectrum disorders.
Adult males with autism do not automatically adopt another person's visual perspective, so you must teach this skill explicitly.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team asked adult men with autism to look at pictures on a screen.
Some pictures showed a person looking at an object.
The men had to press a key when they saw a certain item.
The trick: sometimes the item could only be seen from the other person's point of view.
Neurotypical adults slow down in this situation because their brain automatically takes the other view.
The researchers wanted to know if the ASD group would slow down too.
What they found
The men with autism did not slow down at all.
Their reaction times stayed the same whether the other person could see the item or not.
This means they did not automatically adopt the on-screen person's visual perspective.
In plain words, the altercentric interference effect was missing.
How this fits with other research
Bailey et al. (1990) first showed that autistic people can pass explicit visual perspective tests yet fail cognitive ones.
Doi et al. (2020) now shows even the fast, automatic part of visual perspective taking is absent in adults.
Fletcher-Watson et al. (2008) seemed to disagree: they found typical attention to eye-gaze direction.
The difference is task type.
Sue's study only asked participants to notice if eyes moved; Hirokazu's task required stepping inside the other person's line of sight.
Akechi et al. (2014) also aligns once age is noted: adolescents with ASD show no unconscious boost for direct gaze, just as these adults show no automatic perspective shift.
Why it matters
If a client does not automatically notice what you can see, do not rely on quick glances or shared looks to communicate.
Instead, point, label, or physically move items into his line of sight.
Teach perspective taking as an explicit rule: "I stand here, so I see X; you stand there, so you see Y."
Build practice into social skills groups by rotating seats and asking each learner to list what the opposite side can and cannot see.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Some theorists have suggested that the ability of visual perspective-taking (VPT) constitutes a rudimentary process of social cognition, and as such, the ability of VPT in people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been the focus of intensive research. AIM: The present study investigated whether adult males with ASD show signs of implicit VPT in first-level VPT tasks, in which participants were required to judge whether a target object can be seen from another's perspective, even when they are not explicitly required to take another's perspective. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: We examined whether the information from another's visual perspective interferes with visual processing from the participant's own perspective ("altercentric interference") using the reaction time as the main performance indicator in adult males with or without ASD. Eye movement patterns during VPT were analyzed for some participants. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: The results revealed signs of altercentric interference in neurotypical adults, but not in adult males with ASD. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: The results indicate the possibility that people with ASD may rely on a different strategy than neurotypical adults in completing a first-level VPT task.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2020 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2020.103593