UNSPECIFIED. (2006) Perceptual similarity in autism. QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, 59 (7). pp. 1237-1254. ISSN 1747-0218

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Abstract

People with autism have consistently been found to outperform controls on visuo-spatial tasks such as block design, embedded figures, and visual search tasks. Plaisted, O'Riordan, and others (Bonnel et al., 2003; O'Riordan & Plaisted, 2001; O'Riordan, Plaisted, Driver, & Baron-Cohen, 2001; Plaisted, O'Riordan, & Baron-Cohen, 1998a, 1998b) have suggested that these findings might be explained in terms of reduced perceptual similarity in autism, and that reduced perceptual similarity could also account for the difficulties that people with autism have in making generalizations to novel situations. In this study, high-functioning adults with autism and ability-matched controls performed a low-level categorization task designed to examine perceptual similarity. Results were analysed using standard statistical techniques and modelled using a quantitative model of categorization. This analysis revealed that participants with autism required reliably longer to learn the category structure than did the control group but, contrary to the predictions of the reduced perceptual similarity hypothesis, no evidence was found of more accurate performance by the participants with autism during the generalization stage. Our results suggest that when all participants are attending to the same attributes of an object in the visual domain, people with autism will not display signs of enhanced perceptual similarity.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology Q Science > QP Physiology
Journal or Publication Title:	QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
Publisher:	PSYCHOLOGY PRESS
ISSN:	1747-0218
Date:	2006
Volume:	59
Number:	7
Number of Pages:	18
Page Range:	pp. 1237-1254
Identification Number:	10.1080/02724980543000196
Publication Status:	Published
URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/33352

Data sourced from Thomson Reuters' Web of Knowledge

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