![]() One way of supporting the feasibility of such a relationship would be to demonstrate that this bias is a ubiquitous property of vision in individuals with ASD.ĪSD-related detail-focused processing has been initially supported by superior detail-focused abstract visual tasks, including the embedded figure task 3 and the Navon task 17. Consequently, Happé and Frith 9 pointed out that the future veracity of WCC critically depends on establishing a relationship between a detail-focused processing bias and real-life abilities and difficulties in ASD individuals. However, a string of studies finding no evidence for a relationship between perceptual measures of weak central coherence and measures of theory of mind and social skills 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 led to a revised version of WCC 9 suggesting that a bias towards processing details and social deficits might be two distinct aspects of ASD. The original WCC formulation 10 proposed that a bias towards processing details might underlie deficits in social functioning central to ASD 11: a focus on details could cause individuals with ASD to miss socially meaningful cues that are global in nature, like facial expressions 12. This, however, has been argued to come at the cost of a reduced ability to ‘see the big picture’ according to the influential weak central coherence (WCC) theory 8, 9. In short, ASD has been associated with having an eye for detail. A well-known, albeit unrepresentative, case of ASD-related enhanced processing of visual detail is the savant ability of Stephen Wiltshire, who is able to draw highly detailed urban landscapes after having seen his subject only briefly ( ). For example, ASD has been associated with superior performance for the embedded figures test 2, 3, 4, which involves searching for a simple shape contained by a complex figure, and faster identification of the odd-man-out in cluttered displays 5, 6, 7. An intriguing aspect of ASD is that it is also associated with superior performance for tasks that involve the processing of visual detail. Diagnostic criteria for ASD include persistent deficits in social interactions and communication and repetitive patterns of behavior 1. Similar content being viewed by othersĪutism is a developmental disorder, now referred to as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), that manifests itself in a variety of forms. Therefore, our findings suggest that a greater number of autistic traits in neurotypical individuals is associated with a more detail-oriented visual information processing strategy and that this effect might generalize to a clinical ASD population. Furthermore, we found that this reliance-on-detail effect was best predicted by the presence of the most clinically relevant autistic traits. The main finding of this study is that image recognition in participants with an above-median number of autistic traits benefited more from the presence of high-spatial frequency image features. To this end, we use a novel reverse correlation-based method (feature diagnosticity mapping) for measuring the relative importance of low-level image features for object recognition. To address this question, we investigated whether a greater number of autistic traits in neurotypical subjects is associated with an increased reliance on image details during a natural image recognition task. But it remains to be shown that a detail-focused processing bias is a ubiquitous property of vision in individuals with ASD. Please see our Terms and Conditions for translations.Individuals with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis are often described as having an eye for detail. If you have translated any of the ARC tests, and are happy to post your translation on our website, to be used by other researchers, please contact us. If you are concerned that you, or a friend or relative, may be autistic, please discuss these concerns with your GP or family doctor or ask the National Autistic Society (NAS) or equivalent charity in your country, for advice. Diagnosis is made on the basis of a clinical assessment including using clinical judgement. Our tests are not diagnostic: No single score on any of our tests or questionnaires indicates that an individual is autistic. You may not adapt or modify any of these tests, unless permission has been given by the Autism Research Centre. You can download them below provided that they are used for research purposes and not for commercial use, and provided due acknowledgement of ARC as the source is given. The ARC designs tests, evaluates and validates them, and then makes them freely available to the research community or for clinicians. ![]()
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