Title
Biological motion and autism spectrum disorder
Document Type
Conference Paper
RIS ID
19452
Abstract
Studies have shown that typically developing individuals are very sensitive to visual cues generated by humans and animals. The human visual system enables us to categorise sex and identity through recognition of biological motion of faces, and these abilities take place at less than 12 months of age. In autism, there is evidence of both face- and motion-processing deficits, yet we do not know the extent of any deficits in facial-motion processing. To investigate whether motion provides useful information for categorising faces we conducted a computer-animated study on a group of adults with autism and a matched control group. The categorisation process involved discriminating sequences of animations of an average head with movements captured from real people. These stimuli had identical spatial characteristics and differed only in the way they moved. They were shown upright, inverted, forwards, and backwards. We report that the autistic observers showed consistently higher discrimination thresholds in all conditions than the control group. This corresponds with previous findings of visual recognition of biological motion with point-light displays. This finding is discussed with respect to extracting sophisticated information for social interaction and communication from faces and biological motion in the autistic population.
COinS
Publication Details
Ruparelia, K, O'Brien, J, Spencer, J, Hill, HC & Johnston, A, Biological motion and autism spectrum disorder, Perception 35 ECVP Abstract Supplement, 2006, p 150, Adam Gelbtuch.