It is widely reported that individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) direct their attention in an atypical manner. When viewing complex scenes, typically developing individuals look at social aspects of scenes more rapidly than individuals with ASD. In the absence of a strong drive to extract social information, is something else capturing…

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) report difficulty integrating simultaneously presented visual and auditory stimuli (Iarocci & McDonald, 2006), albeit showing enhanced perceptual processing of unisensory stimuli, as well as an enhanced role of perception in higher-order cognitive tasks (Enhanced Perceptual Functioning (EPF) model;…

The magnocellular (M) pathway hypothesis proposes that impaired visual motion perception observed in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) might be mediated by atypical functioning of the subcortical M pathway, as this pathway provides the bulk of visual input to cortical motion detectors. To test this hypothesis, we measured luminance…

The Embedded Figure Test (EFT) requires locating a simple shape embedded within a background of overlapping target-irrelevant scene elements. Observers with autism, or those with high levels of autistic-like traits, typically outperform matched comparison groups on the EFT. This research investigated the critical visual properties which give rise…

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are associated with abnormalities in face memory, which evidence suggests has a protracted development through adolescence. The development of face memory in people with and without ASD, from 9 to 29 years old, was examined using the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT). Results indicate that the developmental…

Behavioural, neuroimaging and neurophysiological approaches emphasise the active and constructive nature of visual perception, determined not solely by the environmental input, but modulated top-down by prior knowledge. For example, degraded images, which at first appear as meaningless "blobs", can easily be recognized as, say, a face, after…

Persons with Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) display atypical perceptual processing in visual and auditory tasks. In vision, Bertone, Mottron, Jelenic, and Faubert (2005) found that enhanced and diminished visual processing is linked to the level of neural complexity required to process stimuli, as proposed in the neural complexity hypothesis.…

A central feature of autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs) is a difficulty in identifying and reading human expressions, including those present in the moving human form. One previous study, by Blake et al. (2003), reports decreased sensitivity for perceiving biological motion in children with autism, suggesting that perceptual anomalies underlie…

In an early description of the mu rhythm, Gastaut and Bert [Gastaut, H. J., & Bert, J. (1954). EEG changes during cinematographic presentation. "Clinical Neurophysiology", 6, 433-444] noted that it was blocked when an individual identified himself with an active person on the screen, suggesting that it may be modulated by the degree to which the…

One of the components of abnormal social functioning in autism is an impaired ability to direct eye gaze onto other people's faces in social situations. Here, we investigated the relationship between gaze onto the eye and mouth regions of faces, and the visual information that was present within those regions. We used the "Bubbles" method to vary…

Impaired social cognition is a core feature of autism. There is much evidence showing people with autism use a different cognitive style than controls for face-processing. We tested if people with autism would show differential activation of social brain areas during a face-processing task. Thirteen adults with high-functioning autism or Asperger…

Language delay and impairment are salient features of autism. More specifically, there is evidence of atypical semantic organization in autism, but the functional brain correlates are not well understood. The current study used functional MRI to examine activation associated with semantic category decision. Ten high-functioning men with autism…