Autistic and non-autistic adults completed a visual perspective taking (VPT) task, reporting an object's location from an actor's perspective, or their own. On half the trials the actor looked at and reached for the object, and on half did not. Accuracy and reaction time were measured. In Experiment 1, both groups (N = 34, mean age = 24 years)…

In this study, we investigated whether the difficulties in body motion (BM) perception may led to deficit in emotion recognition in Autism spectrum disorder (ASD). To this aim, individuals with high-functioning ASD were asked to recognise fearful, happy, and neutral BM depicted as static images or dynamic point-light and full-light displays.…

It has been argued that metacognition and mindreading rely on the same cognitive processes (Carruthers in The opacity of mind: an integrative theory of self-knowledge, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011). It is widely accepted that mindreading is diminished among individuals diagnosed with autism (Brunsdon and Happé in Autism 18(1):17-30,…

Impaired facial emotion recognition in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is in contrast to their intact emotional music recognition. This study tested whether emotion congruent music enhances facial emotion recognition. Accuracy and reaction times were assessed for 19 children with ASD and 31 controls in a recognition task with angry,…

To test a central assumption of the increased perceptual capacity account in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), the effects of perceptual load and target-stimulus degradation on auditory detection sensitivity were contrasted. Fourteen adolescents with ASD and 16 neurotypical controls performed a visual letter search task under three…

The embedded figures test has often been used to reveal weak central coherence in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Here, we administered a more standardized automated version of the embedded figures test in combination with the configural superiority task, to investigate the effect of contextual modulation on local feature…

This study assessed visual search abilities, tested through the flicker task, in children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Twenty-two children diagnosed with ASD and 22 matched typically developing (TD) children were told to detect changes in objects of central interest or objects of marginal interest (MI) embedded in either…

The provision of visual support to individuals with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is widely recommended. We explored one mechanism underlying the use of visual supports: efficiency of language processing. Two groups of children, one with and one without an ASD, participated. The groups had comparable oral and written language skills and…

Different views on the origin of deficits in action chaining in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have been posited, ranging from functional impairments in action planning to internal models supporting motor control. Thirty-one children and adolescents with ASD and twenty-nine matched controls participated in a two-choice reach-to-grasp paradigm…

To explore how being at high risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD), based on having an older sibling diagnosed with ASD, affects word comprehension and language processing speed, 18-, 24- and 36-month-old children, at high and low risk for ASD were tested in a cross-sectional study, on an eye gaze measure of receptive language that measured how…

The empirical literature has presented inconsistent evidence for deficits in the recognition of basic emotion expressions in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), which may be due to the focus on research with relatively small sample sizes. Additionally, it is proposed that although children with ASD may correctly identify emotion…