The light-from-above prior is intact in autistic children.
The light-from-above prior is intact in autistic children.
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DOI：
10.1016/j.jecp.2017.04.005
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发表时间：
2017-09
影响因子：
2.6
通讯作者：
Pellicano E
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Croydon A;Karaminis T;Neil L;Burr D;Pellicano E
孩子们从左上角假设光源来解读阴影图案。自闭症儿童和典型儿童使用先前假设的程度与成年人相似。在7岁到成年之间，偏见水平没有增加。感官信息本质上是模棱两可的。大脑根据先验知识预测或预测感觉环境，从而消除这些信息的歧义。Pellicano和Burr(2012)提出，这一过程在自闭症中可能是非典型的，内部假设或“前科”可能比典型的个人被低估或较少使用。成年人使用的一个强有力的内部假设是“来自上方的光”先验，这是一种偏见，认为模糊的阴影图案就像是由位于场景上方(和略靠左)的光源形成的。我们调查了自闭症儿童(n=18)是否在与年龄和智力相似的典型儿童(n=18)之前使用这一工具的程度相同。孩子们被要求判断在24个旋转中呈现的阴影六边形刺激的形状(凹面或凸面)。我们估计了每个儿童的凸性判断比例和刺激方向之间的关系，并计算出与这些判断最一致的光源位置。在这项任务中，儿童的表现与成年人相似，他们更愿意假设光源来自左上角，而其他解释与阴影证据相一致。自闭症儿童和典型儿童使用相同程度的先前假设来理解阴影模式。未来的研究应该检查这种先天因素在自闭症儿童中是否像在普通成年人中一样具有适应性(即，可以通过训练进行修改)。
Children interpreted shading patterns assuming a light source from above-left. Autistic and typical children used prior assumptions to a similar extent as adults. There were no increases in the level of bias between 7 years and adulthood. Sensory information is inherently ambiguous. The brain disambiguates this information by anticipating or predicting the sensory environment based on prior knowledge. Pellicano and Burr (2012) proposed that this process may be atypical in autism and that internal assumptions, or “priors,” may be underweighted or less used than in typical individuals. A robust internal assumption used by adults is the “light-from-above” prior, a bias to interpret ambiguous shading patterns as if formed by a light source located above (and slightly to the left) of the scene. We investigated whether autistic children (n = 18) use this prior to the same degree as typical children of similar age and intellectual ability (n = 18). Children were asked to judge the shape (concave or convex) of a shaded hexagon stimulus presented in 24 rotations. We estimated the relation between the proportion of convex judgments and stimulus orientation for each child and calculated the light source location most consistent with those judgments. Children behaved similarly to adults in this task, preferring to assume that the light source was from above left, when other interpretations were compatible with the shading evidence. Autistic and typical children used prior assumptions to the same extent to make sense of shading patterns. Future research should examine whether this prior is as adaptable (i.e., modifiable with training) in autistic children as it is in typical adults.