Enhanced Integration of Motion Information in Children With Autism
Enhanced Integration of Motion Information in Children With Autism
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DOI：
10.1523/jneurosci.4645-14.2015
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发表时间：
2015-05-06
影响因子：
5.3
通讯作者：
Pellicano, Elizabeth
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Manning, Catherine;Tibber, Marc S.;Pellicano, Elizabeth
为了判断一群鱼或一群人的整体方向，观察者必须整合跨空间和时间的运动信号。我们汇集运动能力的限制很大程度上是使用运动相干范式确定的，在该范式中，观察者报告随机移动噪声点中相干运动点的方向。自闭症患者在这项任务上表现不佳被广泛解释为整合过程中断的证据。然而，重要的是，运动相干性阈值不一定仅受池化限制。它们还可能受到单个元素方向估计不精确或难以将信号与噪声分离的限制。在这里，33 名 6-13 岁的自闭症儿童和 33 名年龄和能力匹配的典型儿童执行了一项更稳健的任务，报告存在和不存在方向可变性的情况下的平均点方向以及标准运动连贯性任务。当所有元素朝同一方向移动（无变化）时，自闭症儿童与典型儿童一样对方向差异敏感。然而，值得注意的是，自闭症儿童在存在方向变异的情况下对平均方向更加敏感，这提供了自闭症运动整合增强的第一个证据。尽管平均能力有所提高，但自闭症儿童在运动连贯性任务中的表现与典型儿童相当，这表明他们的运动连贯性阈值可能受到信号与噪声隔离减少的限制。尽管在某些情况下可能有利，但整合的增加可能会导致自闭症儿童感觉“感觉超负荷”。
To judge the overall direction of a shoal of fish or a crowd of people, observers must integrate motion signals across space and time. The limits on our ability to pool motion have largely been established using the motion coherence paradigm, in which observers report the direction of coherently moving dots amid randomly moving noise dots. Poor performance by autistic individuals on this task has widely been interpreted as evidence of disrupted integrative processes. Critically, however, motion coherence thresholds are not necessarily limited only by pooling. They could also be limited by imprecision in estimating the direction of individual elements or by difficulties segregating signal from noise. Here, 33 children with autism 6-13 years of age and 33 age- and ability-matched typical children performed a more robust task reporting mean dot direction both in the presence and the absence of directional variability alongside a standard motion coherence task. Children with autism were just as sensitive to directional differences as typical children when all elements moved in the same direction (no variability). However, remarkably, children with autism were more sensitive to the average direction in the presence of directional variability, providing the first evidence of enhanced motion integration in autism. Despite this improved averaging ability, children with autism performed comparably to typical children in the motion coherence task, suggesting that their motion coherence thresholds may be limited by reduced segregation of signal from noise. Although potentially advantageous under some conditions, increased integration may lead to feelings of "sensory overload" in children with autism.