"I do not see the world as others do." Diminished perceptual adaptation, hypo-priors and autism.

“我看世界的方式与其他人不同。”

• 批准号: MR/J013145/1
• 负责人: Elizabeth Pellicano
• 金额: $ 73.03万
• 依托单位: University College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2012 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=MR%2FJ013145%2F1
• 关键词: do; see; world; others; do.

Autism is a complex developmental condition, most well known for the way that it affects how a person interacts and communicates with others. But autism can affect an individual's behaviour in other important and equally debilitating ways, such as in an obsessive desire for everything to be the same - like taking the exact same route to school every day - and in senses that are working too well - like being averse to florescent light - or not well enough - like being drawn to spinning objects. In this proposal, we suggest that this wide range of autistic behaviours might be caused by fundamental differences in the way that a person with autism perceives and interprets the world around them. For all people, knowledge about the world arrives through our senses. To process this information rapidly and efficiently, the brain must continually "tune" its sensitivity to match what is in the environment. When one wakes during the night and turns on the light, at first, it is difficult to see very much at all until receptors in the eye gradually adjust to the new conditions. Such light "adaptation" is truly remarkable. It illustrates the way in which the brain constantly - and flexibly - "adapts" to changes in the outside world. This proposal asks what the world would look like, and how might be it interpreted, if these adaptation processes were disrupted? Specifically, it asks whether less flexible brain adaptation processes might be part and parcel of autism.In the project, we will compare the perceptual functions of children with autism and typically developing children using innovative experimental techniques. We will see whether the perceptual experiences of children with autism are less "adaptable" than children without autism. We also want to know whether these differences occur generally throughout the brain or whether they might be specific to processing only certain types of sensory information. Furthermore, we will use powerful new forms of computer modelling, which have rarely been applied to the study of autism, but which can be of great assistance in pinpointing precisely which psychological processes might be different in autism. We hypothesise that children with autism might be less adaptable because they rely too heavily on what they sense in the "here and now" rather than using prior knowledge - knowledge that they've accrued with experience - to shape and make sense of what is in the environment. The possibility that people with autism perceive the world as it "really is" rather than as imbued by prior experiences is a critical new insight: not only can it help explain the differences in the way people with autism experience the world but it might also explain some of the hallmark features of autism, especially the sensory sensitivities and their difficulties dealing with new situations and experiences. If confirmed, our suggestion would offer a new way of thinking about, and studying, autism capable of playing a crucial role in interventions aimed at enabling people with autism to perceive and experience the world around them with less distress.

自闭症是一种复杂的发育状况，最著名的是它影响一个人与他人互动和沟通的方式。但自闭症会以其他重要且同样令人衰弱的方式影响个人的行为，例如对一切都一样的强迫性渴望——比如每天走完全相同的路线去学校——以及感觉过于良好——比如厌恶荧光灯——或者不够好——比如被旋转的物体所吸引。在这项提议中，我们认为这种广泛的自闭症行为可能是由自闭症患者感知和解释周围世界的方式的根本差异引起的。对于所有人来说，关于世界的知识都是通过我们的感官获得的。为了快速有效地处理这些信息，大脑必须不断“调整”其敏感性以匹配环境中的情况。当一个人在夜间醒来并打开灯时，一开始很难看清东西，直到眼睛中的感受器逐渐适应新的条件。这样的光线“适应”确实了不起。它说明了大脑不断灵活地“适应”外部世界变化的方式。该提案询问，如果这些适应过程被破坏，世界会是什么样子，以及如何解释它？具体来说，它询问不太灵活的大脑适应过程是否可能是自闭症的重要组成部分。在该项目中，我们将使用创新的实验技术比较自闭症儿童和典型发育儿童的感知功能。我们将看看自闭症儿童的感知体验是否比非自闭症儿童的“适应性”更差。我们还想知道这些差异是否普遍存在于整个大脑中，或者它们是否可能仅特定于处理某些类型的感官信息。此外，我们将使用强大的新形式的计算机建模，这种模型很少应用于自闭症的研究，但对于准确查明自闭症的哪些心理过程可能有所不同，它可以提供很大的帮助。我们假设自闭症儿童的适应能力可能较差，因为他们过于依赖“此时此地”的感知，而不是利用先验知识（他们通过经验积累的知识）来塑造和理解环境中的事物。自闭症患者感知世界的“真实情况”而不是受先前经验的影响的可能性是一个重要的新见解：它不仅可以帮助解释自闭症患者体验世界的方式的差异，而且还可以解释自闭症的一些标志性特征，特别是感觉敏感性以及他们处理新情况和经历的困难。如果得到证实，我们的建议将提供一种思考和研究自闭症的新方法，能够在旨在使自闭症患者减少痛苦地感知和体验周围世界的干预措施中发挥关键作用。

项目成果

Reduced face aftereffects in autism are not due to poor attention.

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0081353
• 发表时间: 2013
• 期刊: PloS one
• 影响因子: 3.7
• 作者: Ewing L;Leach K;Pellicano E;Jeffery L;Rhodes G
• 通讯作者: Rhodes G

Atypicalities in perceptual adaptation in autism do not extend to perceptual causality.

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0120439
• 发表时间: 2015
• 期刊: PloS one
• 影响因子: 3.7
• 作者: Karaminis T;Turi M;Neil L;Badcock NA;Burr D;Pellicano E
• 通讯作者: Pellicano E

Using effort to measure reward value of faces in children with autism.

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0079493
• 发表时间: 2013
• 期刊: PloS one
• 影响因子: 3.7
• 作者: Ewing L;Pellicano E;Rhodes G
• 通讯作者: Rhodes G

Flexible integration of visual cues in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder.

• DOI: 10.1002/aur.1509
• 发表时间: 2016-02
• 期刊: Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research
• 作者: Bedford R;Pellicano E;Mareschal D;Nardini M
• 通讯作者: Nardini M

The light-from-above prior is intact in autistic children.

• DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2017.04.005
• 发表时间: 2017-09
• 期刊: Journal of experimental child psychology
• 影响因子: 2.6
• 作者: Croydon A;Karaminis T;Neil L;Burr D;Pellicano E
• 通讯作者: Pellicano E