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Updated: Jun 24, 2026
09:13
Testing Sensory and Multisensory Function in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Published on: April 22, 2015
Missing the big picture: impaired development of global shape processing in autism
K Suzanne Scherf1, Beatriz Luna, Ruth Kimchi
1Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, USA. scherf@pitt.edu
Summary
Individuals with autism (ASD) show delayed development in perceptual grouping, impacting visual processing and object recognition. This developmental delay, particularly in adolescence, may affect social and emotional behavior in ASD.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Psychology
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often exhibit hypersensitivity to local sensory details.
- This hypersensitivity may impair the ability to perceptually group visual elements, affecting higher-level processing.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the developmental trajectory of perceptual grouping abilities in high-functioning individuals with autism (HFA).
- To compare perceptual organization development in HFA and typically developing (TD) individuals across a wide age range.
Main Methods:
- Utilized a compound letter global/local (GL) task and a microgenetic prime paradigm (MPP) with few- and many-element hierarchical displays.
- Assessed age-related changes in sensitivity to global vs. local information and the ability to individuate or encode global shapes.
Main Results:
- HFA participants did not show age-related improvements in global information sensitivity, unlike TD controls.
- While HFA and TD groups both individuated few-element displays, HFA individuals failed to improve in encoding global shapes of many-element displays with age.
- HFA individuals were consistently faster at perceiving local elements in many-element displays across all age groups.
Conclusions:
- The maturation of perceptual grouping for shape information is impaired in autism, hindering efficient object recognition.
- This developmental deficit is particularly pronounced during adolescence, a period of improvement in TD individuals.
- Atypical perceptual organization in autism may disrupt visual processing, potentially impacting social and emotional development.
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