Cite as:
Igliozzi R, Del Viva M M, Tancredi R, Brizzolara D, 2004, "Spatial and motion integration in children with autism" Perception 33 ECVP Abstract Supplement

Spatial and motion integration in children with autism

R Igliozzi, M M Del Viva, R Tancredi, D Brizzolara

Neuropsychological studies have produced controversial results regarding local - global processing in autistic subjects. Here, we investigate spatial and motion integration in a sample of ten autistic individuals, aged 6 - 16 years, diagnosed by Autism Diagnostic Interview -- Revised. All subjects underwent psychological, psychiatric and neuropsychological evaluation, which revealed impairment in superior cognitive abilities, while visuo-perceptual abilities were borderline. Control groups comprised chronological and mental age-matched children. To test spatial integration of contours, we measured detection thresholds for a closed chain of Gabor patches (Kovács et al, 1993 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 90 7495 - 7497), as a function of background noise of randomly positioned and oriented Gabors, with a 4AFC procedure. Thresholds were measured for different values of local inter-element distance in the target. Motion perception was tested by measuring direction discrimination thresholds of coherent optic- flow stimuli as a function of noise, in a 2AFC procedure. Both experiments showed no significant differences between the performance of autistic and normal subjects. The results suggest that autistic children do not show impaired processing of global patterns.

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