Abstract
Individuals with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show hallmark deficits in social perception. These difficulties might also reflect fundamental deficits in integrating visual signals. We contrasted predictions of a social perception and a spatial-temporal integration deficit account. Participants with ASD and matched controls performed two tasks: the first required spatiotemporal integration of global motion signals without social meaning, the second required processing of socially relevant local motion. The ASD group only showed differences to controls in social motion evaluation. In addition, gray matter volume in the temporal-parietal junction correlated positively with accuracy in social motion perception in the ASD group. Our findings suggest that social-perceptual difficulties in ASD cannot be reduced to deficits in spatial-temporal integration.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders |
| Volume | 44 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1433-1446 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| ISSN | 0162-3257 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 01.01.2014 |
Funding
Acknowledgments We especially would like to thank all volunteers who participated in this study. Furthermore, we thank C. Reissmann, K. Deazle and A. Daniel for help with recruitment and data assessment, J. Hipp and T.R. Schneider for help with motion coherence task, and I. Peiker for statistical advice. This work was supported by the European Union (HEALTH-F2-2008-200728, ERC-2010-AdG-269716, FP7-ICT-270212). N.D. was supported by a fellowship of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DA 1358/1-1). J.S. was supported by the Max Planck Society. K.V. was supported by the German Ministry of Research and Education (01 GW 0611). D.S. was supported in part by Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF 0737/114). O.S. was supported by the Deutsche Fors-chungsgemeinschaft (DFG Grant MU1692/2-1).
