Background
Autistic perception encompasses both inferior and superior performance on different
types of visuospatial tasks. Influential neurocognitive models relevant to atypical
perception (i.e., weak central coherence, enhanced perceptual functioning) can, to
differing degrees, account for these findings. However, the neural underpinnings mediating
atypical visuospatial autistic perception have yet to be elucidated.
Methods
In the present study, we used a lateral masking paradigm to assess the functional
integrity of lateral interactions mediating visuospatial information processing within
early visual areas of autistic (n = 18) and nonautistic (n = 15) observers. Detection thresholds were measured for centrally presented Gabor
targets flanked collinearly at different distances (experiment 1) and flanked orthogonally
at different contrasts (experiment 2).
Results
Autistic and nonautistic groups showed increased target sensitivity when the distance
between collinear targets and flankers was small (3 lambda) but not large (6 lambda).
However, the effect of small-distance facilitation was significantly greater for the
autistic group. In addition, we observed a group-specific effect of contrast: in the
autistic group, target sensitivity was enhanced by low flanker contrasts of both 5%
and 10% luminance difference, whereas for the nonautistic group, this effect occurred
at 10% contrast only.
Conclusions
These findings support the idea that atypical visuospatial perception in autism may
originate from altered lateral connectivity within primary visual areas, differentially
affecting perception at the earliest levels of feature extraction.
Key Words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: September 12, 2011
Accepted:
July 20,
2011
Received in revised form:
June 29,
2011
Received:
January 17,
2011
Identification
Copyright
© 2011 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
