UCL Discovery
UCL home » Library Services » Electronic resources » UCL Discovery

Ensemble perception of color in autistic adults

Maule, J; Stanworth, K; Pellicano, E; Franklin, A; (2017) Ensemble perception of color in autistic adults. Autism Research , 10 (5) pp. 839-851. 10.1002/aur.1725. Green open access

[thumbnail of Pellicano_Maule_et_al-2016-Autism_Research.pdf]
Preview
Text
Pellicano_Maule_et_al-2016-Autism_Research.pdf - Published Version

Download (310kB) | Preview

Abstract

Dominant accounts of visual processing in autism posit that autistic individuals have an enhanced access to details of scenes [e.g., weak central coherence] which is reflected in a general bias toward local processing. Furthermore, the attenuated priors account of autism predicts that the updating and use of summary representations is reduced in autism. Ensemble perception describes the extraction of global summary statistics of a visual feature from a heterogeneous set (e.g., of faces, sizes, colors), often in the absence of local item representation. The present study investigated ensemble perception in autistic adults using a rapidly presented (500 msec) ensemble of four, eight, or sixteen elements representing four different colors. We predicted that autistic individuals would be less accurate when averaging the ensembles, but more accurate in recognizing individual ensemble colors. The results were consistent with the predictions. Averaging was impaired in autism, but only when ensembles contained four elements. Ensembles of eight or sixteen elements were averaged equally accurately across groups. The autistic group also showed a corresponding advantage in rejecting colors that were not originally seen in the ensemble. The results demonstrate the local processing bias in autism, but also suggest that the global perceptual averaging mechanism may be compromised under some conditions. The theoretical implications of the findings and future avenues for research on summary statistics in autism are discussed.

Type: Article
Title: Ensemble perception of color in autistic adults
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1002/aur.1725
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/aur.1725
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright © 2016 The Authors Autism Research published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of International Society for Autism Research. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Keywords: autism; color; ensemble perception; visual perception; priors; global processing
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Social Research Institute
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1538223
Downloads since deposit
150Downloads
Download activity - last month
Download activity - last 12 months
Downloads by country - last 12 months

Archive Staff Only

View Item View Item