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Coherent versus Component Motion Perception in Autism Spectrum Disorder

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Abstract

Research on visual perception in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) tries to reveal the underlying mechanisms of aberrant local and global processing. Global motion perception is one way to study this aspect of ASD. We used plaid motion stimuli, which can be perceived as a coherently moving pattern, requiring feature integration, or as two transparent gratings sliding over each other. If global motion detection is impaired in ASD, this would lead to a decrease of the total time that a coherent pattern is perceived. However, in contrast to other studies in the literature, our results gave no evidence of impaired global motion perception in people with ASD. A reconciliation of the different outcomes is proposed based on spatial frequency processing in ASD.

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Acknowledgments

The work described was supported by an Innovational Research Incentives grant (VIDI-scheme, 402-01-094) of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) to Chantal Kemner. We would like to thank Maarten van der Smagt for his suggestions on the analysis and interpretation of the data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Rudolf Magnus Institute of Neuroscience, University Medical Centre Utrecht, B01.201, Heidelberglaan 100, 3584 CX, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Myriam W. G. Vandenbroucke, Herman van Engeland & Chantal Kemner

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Myriam W. G. Vandenbroucke, H. Steven Scholte & Victor A. F. Lamme

  3. The Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences KNAW), Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Victor A. F. Lamme

  4. Department of Neurocognition, Faculty of Psychology, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

    Chantal Kemner

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  1. Myriam W. G. Vandenbroucke
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  2. H. Steven Scholte
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  3. Herman van Engeland
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  4. Victor A. F. Lamme
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  5. Chantal Kemner
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Correspondence to Myriam W. G. Vandenbroucke.

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Vandenbroucke, M.W.G., Steven Scholte, H., van Engeland, H. et al. Coherent versus Component Motion Perception in Autism Spectrum Disorder. J Autism Dev Disord 38, 941–949 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-007-0467-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-007-0467-0

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