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Gowen E, Jachim S, Subri S, Dickinson C, Hamblin-Pyke B, Warren PA. Collinear facilitation and contour integration in autistic adults: Examining lateral and feedback connectivity. Vision Res 2020; 177:56-67. [PMID: 32977182 DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2020.08.004] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/07/2020] [Revised: 07/24/2020] [Accepted: 08/17/2020] [Indexed: 01/20/2023]
Abstract
Alongside difficulties with communication and social interaction, autism is often accompanied by unusual sensory and perceptual experiences including enhanced visual performance on tasks that involve separating local parts from global context. This superiority may be the result of atypical integrative processing, involving feedback and lateral connections between visual neurons. The current study investigated the integrity of these connections in autistic adults by examining two psychophysics tasks that rely on these processes - collinear facilitation and contour integration. The relative contribution of feedback and lateral connectivity was studied by altering the timing of the target relative to the flankers in the collinear facilitation task, in 16 autistic and 16 non-autistic adults. There were no significant differences in facilitation between the autistic and non-autistic groups, indicating that for this task and participant sample, lateral and feedback connectivity appear relatively intact in autistic individuals. Contour integration was examined in a different group of 20 autistic and 18 non-autistic individuals, for open and closed contours to assess the closure effect (improved detection of closed compared to open contours). Autistic individuals showed a reduced closure effect at both short (150 ms) and longer (500 ms) stimulus presentation durations that was driven by better performance of the autistic group for the open contours. These results suggest that reduced closure in a simple contour detection paradigm is unlikely to be due to slower global processing. Reduced closure has implications for understanding sensory overload by contributing to reduced figure-ground segregation of salient visual features.
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Affiliation(s)
- Emma Gowen
- Division of Neuroscience and Experimental Psychology, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, University of Manchester, Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, Manchester M13 9PL, UK.
| | - Stephen Jachim
- Division of Neuroscience and Experimental Psychology, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, University of Manchester, Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, Manchester M13 9PL, UK
| | - Sabrina Subri
- Center of Optometry, Faculty of Health Sciences, Universiti Teknologi MARA, UiTM Cawangan Selangor, 42300 Puncak Alam, Selangor, Malaysia
| | - Christine Dickinson
- Division of Optometry, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
| | - Benjamin Hamblin-Pyke
- Division of Neuroscience and Experimental Psychology, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, University of Manchester, Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, Manchester M13 9PL, UK
| | - Paul A Warren
- Division of Neuroscience and Experimental Psychology, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, University of Manchester, Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, Manchester M13 9PL, UK
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Jachim S, Gowen E, Warren PA. Individual differences in the dynamics of collinear facilitation? Vision Res 2017; 133:61-72. [PMID: 28153494 DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2016.12.016] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/08/2016] [Revised: 11/18/2016] [Accepted: 12/22/2016] [Indexed: 11/20/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Stephen Jachim
- Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
| | - Emma Gowen
- Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
| | - Paul A Warren
- Division of Neuroscience and Experimental Psychology, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK.
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