Do different experimental tasks affect psychophysical measurements of motion perception in autism-spectrum disorder? An analysis

Asmaa Bakroon,1 Vasudevan Lakshminarayanan1–3 1Theoretical and Experimental Epistemology Laboratory, School of Optometry and Vision Science, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada; 2Departments of Physics and Systems Design Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada; 3Department of Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada Abstract: There is a rapid increase in the number of individuals with high-functioning autism (HFA). Research on motion perception in HFA has shown deficits in processing motion information at the higher visual cortical areas (V5/middle temporal). Several hypotheses have been put forth to explain these deficits as being due to enhanced processing of small details at the expense of the global picture or as a global integration abnormality. However, there is a lot of variability in the results obtained from experiments designed to study motion in adults with autism. These could be due to the inherent diagnostic differences within even the same range of the autism spectrum and/or due to comparison of different experimental paradigms whose processing by the same visual neural areas could be different. In this review, we discuss the various results on motion processing in HFA, as well as the theories of motion perception in autism. Keywords: autism-spectrum disorder, high-functioning autism, motion perception, biological motion, form perception, random-dot kinematogram, local motion, global motion&nbsp