[Discrimination of facial components in autistic children]

A simultaneous face discrimination learning task was given to 15 autistic children and 14 normal controls. Face stimuli were presented in the form of schematic line drawing. After attaining discrimination, their responses to facial components, namely, color, expression and orientation (upright or inverted), were tested. The autistic group more frequently responded incorrectly to orientation than to the other two components. Moreover, the response latencies to all the three components were shorter in the autistic group than in the normal group. Using the same experimental procedure, a figure discrimination learning task was given to other groups of autistic and normal children. The results indicated no significant differences between the autistic and normal groups in either the rate of correct responses or the latency to figure components. These results were interpreted to suggest that the autistic children recognized face stimuli only in terms of component properties.