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Perceptual decision-making in autism as assessed by "spot the difference" visual cognition tasks
Nazia Jassim1,2, Adrian M Owen3,4, Paula Smith5
1Autism Research Centre, Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. nj304@cam.ac.uk.
Scientific Reports
|September 14, 2022
Summary
Autistic individuals show distinct response strategies in visual perception tasks. They tend to favor "mismatch" decisions, impacting accuracy in distinguishing similar figures.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Psychology
Background:
- Discriminating between similar figures is challenging due to visual cognitive limitations.
- Neurodiversity, particularly autism, may influence perceptual inference and decision-making processes.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how neurodiversity affects perceptual decision-making when discriminating between similar figures.
- To examine response strategies in autistic versus typical individuals during visual similarity judgments.
Main Methods:
- Online forced-choice similarity judgment tasks were administered to autistic (n=140) and typical (n=147) participants.
- Tasks included 'match' (identical figures) and 'mismatch' (subtly different figures) conditions.
- Signal detection theory was used to analyze response biases.
Main Results:
- Autistic participants exhibited a response bias towards selecting the 'mismatch' option, especially under uncertainty.
- This bias resulted in increased correct identifications of mismatches but also a higher rate of false alarms on matches.
- Differences in response strategies were observed during perceptual decision-making in autism.
Conclusions:
- Autism is associated with distinct response strategies in perceptual decision-making tasks.
- Individuals with autism may adopt a more conservative approach, favoring mismatch detection over match confirmation.
- Understanding these neurodiverse differences is crucial for cognitive science research.
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