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Updated: May 17, 2026

Comparing Eye-tracking Data of Children with High-functioning ASD, Comorbid ADHD, and of a Control Watching Social Videos
Published on: December 7, 2018
Visual search targeting either local or global perceptual processes differs as a function of autistic-like traits in
Renita A Almeida1, J Edwin Dickinson, Murray T Maybery
1School of Psychology (M304), University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA, 6009, Australia. renita.almeida1@gmail.com
Abstract:
Relative to low scorers, high scorers on the autism-spectrum quotient (AQ) show enhanced performance on the embedded figures test and the radial frequency search task (RFST), which has been attributed to both enhanced local processing and differences in combining global percepts. We investigate the role of local and global processing further using the RFST in four experiments. High AQ adults maintained a consistent advantage in search speed across diverse target-distracter stimulus conditions. This advantage may reflect enhanced local processing of curvature in early stages of the form vision pathway and superior global detection of shape primitives. However, more probable is the presence of a superior search process that enables a consistent search advantage at both levels of processing.
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