Journal
BRAIN
Volume 133, Issue -, Pages 599-610Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/brain/awp272
Keywords
autism; visual motion; biological motion; coherent motion; dorsal stream
Categories
Funding
- NEI NIH HHS [R01 EY018216, R01 EY018216-03] Funding Source: Medline
- Autism Speaks [AS1599] Funding Source: Medline
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Several groups have recently reported that people with autism may suffer from a deficit in visual motion processing and proposed that these deficits may be related to a general dorsal stream dysfunction. In order to test the dorsal stream deficit hypothesis, we investigated coherent and biological motion perception as well as coherent form perception in a group of adolescents with autism and a group of age-matched typically developing controls. If the dorsal stream hypothesis were true, we would expect to document deficits in both coherent and biological motion processing in this group but find no deficit in coherent form perception. Using the method of constant stimuli and standard psychophysical analysis techniques, we measured thresholds for coherent motion, biological motion and coherent form. We found that adolescents with autism showed reduced sensitivity to both coherent and biological motion but performed as well as age-matched controls during coherent form perception. Correlations between intelligence quotient and task performance, however, appear to drive much of the group difference in coherent motion perception. Differences between groups on coherent motion perception did not remain significant when intelligence quotient was controlled for, but group differences in biological motion perception were more robust, remaining significant even when intelligence quotient differences were accounted for. Additionally, aspects of task performance on the biological motion perception task were related to autism symptomatology. These results do not support a general dorsal stream dysfunction in adolescents with autism but provide evidence of a more complex impairment in higher-level dynamic attentional processes.
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