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Embedded figures detection in autism and typical development: preliminary evidence of a double dissociation in relationships with visual search.

Jarrold C, Gilchrist ID, Bender A

Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, 8 Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1TN, UK. C.Jarrold@bristol.ac.uk

Individuals with autism show relatively strong performance on tasks that require them to identify the constituent parts of a visual stimulus. This is assumed to be the result of a bias towards processing the local elements in a display that follows from a weakened ability to integrate information at the global level. The results of the current study showed that, among children with autism, ability to locate a figure embedded in a larger stimulus was only related to performance on visual search trials where the target was identified by a unique perceptual feature. In contrast, control children's embedded figures performance was specifically related to their performance on visual search trials where the target was defined by a conjunction of features. This double dissociation suggests that enhanced performance on perceptual tasks by children with autism is not simply a consequence of a quantitative difference in ability to engage in global processing.

Published 29 June 2005 in Dev Sci, 8(4): 344-51.
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