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Updated: Jul 3, 2026
09:13
Testing Sensory and Multisensory Function in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Published on: April 22, 2015
Perception in autism does not adhere to Weber's law
Bat-Sheva Hadad1,2, Sivan Schwartz3
1Department of Special Education, University of Haifa, Haifa, Isreal.
Elife
|March 5, 2019
Summary
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show altered perception, violating Weber's law in visual and haptic tasks. This suggests a fundamental, low-level sensory processing difference in autism.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Psychology
- Autism Research
Background:
- Perceptual atypicalities are common in autism but not well understood.
- Weber's law describes a fundamental principle of sensory perception.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether Weber's law applies to visual and haptic perception in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
- To explore potential underlying mechanisms for altered perception in autism.
Main Methods:
- Measured just-noticeable differences (JNDs) for visual size judgments, haptic weight discrimination, and the brightness-weight illusion in high-functioning individuals with ASD and a typically developing group.
- Applied psychometric functions to analyze JNDs across different stimulus intensities.
Main Results:
- Typically developing individuals demonstrated Weber's law, with JNDs scaling linearly with intensity.
- Individuals with ASD showed a violation of Weber's law, with JNDs not scaling with intensity and fractions decreasing linearly.
- This pattern was consistent across visual and haptic perception domains.
Conclusions:
- Weber's law does not hold for visual and haptic perception in individuals with autism.
- Altered psychophysical computations suggest a modality-independent, low-level mechanism contributing to perceptual differences in autism.
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