Attention, eye movements and perceptual decision-making in autism

Autism is characterized by marked impairments in social interactions and communication skills, but the core deficit or deficits responsible for autism remain unknown. Recent research shows that people with autism also exhibit unusual performance in tasks that require them to discriminate visual stimuli or to search for particular objects amidst irrelevant items. These results suggest that basic elements of sensory-motor processing are fundamentally different in autism, and the goal of this research is to identify which particular aspects of processing are affected, and how. One possibility is that the altered performance in autism is due to abnormal processing early in vision – for example, in the pathways from the retina to the neurons in visual cortex that extract information about object features. Another possibility is that these alterations are due to abnormal control of visual processing – for example, in the mechanisms of attention that regulate the sensitivity of neurons in the visual cortex. A third possibility is that they are due to abnormalities in how the subjects evaluate the visual information and form their perceptual decisions. We are testing these alternatives using video-game-like tests that allow us to separately quantify the effects of sensory processing, attention, and decision-making. These studies will provide fundamental information about how ASD diagnosed individuals differ from typically developing individuals in sensory-motor processing, and identify how imbalances in the control of this processing may be responsible for a range of perceptual, cognitive, and behavioral impairments.

We are recruiting both ASD diagnosed and typically developing adolescents for these projects.

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