Local Processing Bias in Attention and Enhanced Local Processing in Perception in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

This study examines whether local processing in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is related to both attention and perception. Thirteen children with ASD and 20 normative controls completed a selective attention task involving Navon stimuli, in the active attention task and a priming task involving facial stimuli with spatial frequency (SF) filtering as primes in the unconscious perception task. In the selective attention task, children with ASD showed slower responses to both global and local conditions, and fewer correct responses for the global condition than the controls. Results suggest that children with ASD exhibit biased processing towards local information. In the priming task, controls responded faster and more accurate in the low-SF primed stimuli condition compared to the high-SF one, but children with ASD did not show response differences between low- and high-SF conditions. Thus, children with ASD exhibit enhanced local processing in perception. As regards to both attention and perception, children with ASD showed local processing advantage compared with controls.