We report an event-related brain potential (ERP) experiment that tests whether autistic adults are able to maintain and switch between counterfactual and factual worlds. Participants (N = 48) read scenarios that set up a factual or counterfactual scenario, then either maintained the counterfactual world or switched back to the factual world. When…

Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are thought to under-rely on prior knowledge in perceptual decision-making. This study examined whether this applies to decisions of attention allocation, of relevance for 'predictive-coding' accounts of ASD. In a visual search task, a salient but task-irrelevant distractor appeared with higher…

The role of relative salience in processing of hierarchical stimuli in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) was examined in this study. Participants with ASD and typically developing controls performed a Navon letters task under conditions of global salience, local salience or equal salience of both levels. Results revealed no group…

Inconsistent data are available on mental rotation performance in neurotypicals with high autistic-like traits. Here, we tested whether global-local visual processing abilities mediate the influence of specific autistic-like trait domains (social skill, attention switching, attention-to-detail, communication, and imagination) on mental rotation.…

Children referred for audiology evaluation due to speech and language delays represent a neurodevelopmentally high-risk group. The audiology evaluation is a behaviorally-challenging encounter early in the diagnostic process. We assessed interfering behaviors (IB) that complicated completion of audiometry as predictors of autism spectrum disorder…

The multiple object tracking (MOT) paradigm has proven its value in targeting a number of aspects of visual cognition. This study used MOT to investigate the effect of object-based grouping, both in children with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A modified MOT task was administered to both groups, who had to track and distinguish four…

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate superior performances on visuo-spatial tasks emphasizing local information processing; however, findings from studies involving hierarchical stimuli are inconsistent. Wide age ranges and group means complicate their interpretability. Children and adolescents with and without ASD completed…

Recent research has documented impaired ability to resist interference from visual distractors in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and suggests that this phenomenon may be more pronounced in young versus older children (Christ et al., "Neuropsychology" 25(6):690-701, 2011). The present study extends previous findings by…

Studies using hierarchical patterns to test global precedence and local-global interference in individuals with ASD have produced mixed results. The current study focused on stimulus variability and locational uncertainty, while using different attentional modes. Two groups of 44 children with and without ASD completed a divided attention task as…

The role of imitation in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is controversial. Researchers have argued that deficient control of self- and other-related motor representations (self-other distinction) might explain imitation difficulties. In a recent EEG study, we showed that control of imitation relies on high-level as well as on low-level cognitive…

Previous work shows that doing a continuous performance task (CPT) shifts attentional biases in neurotypical individuals towards global aspects of hierarchical Navon figures by selectively activating right hemisphere regions associated with global processing. The present study examines whether CPT can induce similar modulations of attention in…

Previous work has demonstrated that social attention is related to early language abilities. We explored whether we can facilitate word learning among children with autism by directing attention to areas of the scene that have been demonstrated as relevant for successful word learning. We tracked eye movements to faces and objects while children…

In this study, we aimed to evaluate further the functioning and structuring of the semantic system in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). We analyzed the performance of 19 high-functioning young adults with ASD and a group of 20 age-, verbal IQ- and education-matched individuals with the Proactive Interference (PI) Paradigm to evaluate semantic…

Executive functioning deficits found in college students with ASD may have debilitating effects on their everyday activities. Although laboratory studies tend to report unimpaired inhibition in autism, studies of resistance to distractor inhibition reveal difficulties. In two studies, we compared a Virtual Classroom task with paper-and-pencil and…

Although a growing body of research indicates that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit selective deficits in their ability to recognize facial identities and expressions, the source of their face impairment is, as yet, undetermined. In this paper, we consider three possible accounts of the autism face deficit: (1) the holistic…