Biological motion perception in autism spectrum disorder: a meta-analysis

Background: Biological motion, namely the movement of others, conveys information that allows the identification of affective states and intentions. This makes it an important avenue of research in autism spectrum disorder where social functioning is one of the main areas of difficulty. We aimed to create a quantitative summary of previous findings and investigate potential factors, which could explain the variable results found in the literature investigating biological motion perception in autism. Methods: A search from five electronic databases yielded 52 papers eligible for a quantitative summarisation, including behavioural, eye-tracking, electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging studies. Results: Using a three-level random effects meta-analytic approach, we found that individuals with autism generally showed decreased performance in perception and interpretation of biological motion. Results additionally suggest decreased performance when higher order information, such as emotion, is required. Moreover, with the increase of age, the difference between autistic and neurotypical individuals decreases, with children showing the largest effect size overall. Conclusion: We highlight the need for methodological standards and clear distinctions between the age groups and paradigms utilised when trying to interpret differences between the two populations

Biological motion perception in autism spectrum disorder: a meta-analysis

Background: Biological motion, namely the movement of others, conveys information that allows the identification of affective states and intentions. This makes it an important avenue of research in autism spectrum disorder where social functioning is one of the main areas of difficulty. We aimed to create a quantitative summary of previous findings and investigate potential factors, which could explain the variable results found in the literature investigating biological motion perception in autism. Methods: A search from five electronic databases yielded 52 papers eligible for a quantitative summarisation, including behavioural, eye-tracking, electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging studies. Results: Using a three-level random effects meta-analytic approach, we found that individuals with autism generally showed decreased performance in perception and interpretation of biological motion. Results additionally suggest decreased performance when higher order information, such as emotion, is required. Moreover, with the increase of age, the difference between autistic and neurotypical individuals decreases, with children showing the largest effect size overall. Conclusion: We highlight the need for methodological standards and clear distinctions between the age groups and paradigms utilised when trying to interpret differences between the two populations

The world is nuanced but pixelated: autistic individuals’ perspective on HIPPEA

Little attention has been given to the voice of autistic individuals during the development of theories that are trying to explain the condition. This can often make individuals feel that they have to fit into the theory’s definition, rather than it fitting into their experience. We aimed to understand to what extent the HIPPEA (High, Inflexible Precision of Prediction Errors in Autism) theory resonates with the lived experiences of autistic individuals. We conducted 21 questionnaires and 8 follow-up interviews and used a hybrid (deductive and inductive) approach to analyse the data. Based on the participants’ views, HIPPEA provides an explanation for many of the lived experiences of autistic individuals. However, refinement is needed with respect to interpersonal interactions, emotional processing and individuals’ motivation to engage with their environment despite challenges with the way the world is organised. Furthermore, more details are needed for the theory to accurately allow us to understand autism. Lay Abstract: Autism is a condition comprised of difficulties in social and communication contexts, sensory sensitivities as well as restrictive and repetitive behaviours. Many theories have tried to explain all the symptoms and behaviours associated with autism. We focus on one recent theory – High, Inflexible Precision of Prediction Errors in Autism (HIPPEA). We aim to understand how much this theory fits the experiences of autistic individuals. We collected data through 21 online questionnaires and 8 follow-up interviews. One of our participants was a parent of an autistic child, and the remaining were adults who reported a diagnosis of autism. We analysed the data by thinking about how it fitted with what we already knew and by looking for new insights which came up. Our results suggest that autistic individuals can make generalisations but that this happens more slowly across both social and non-social areas. These generalisations are very reliant on detail – in computer terms, they are ‘pixelated’. This is in line with what HIPPEA suggests. We also showed that autistic individuals can be motivated to explore and engage socially, something that needs more consideration within HIPPEA. Overall, this study shows that HIPPEA can explain many autistic experiences, but that further refinement is needed

Evaluation of the high inflexible precision of prediction errors in autism theory using simple and biological motion paradigms

Abstract not currently available

Prediction in motion in autism in an apparent motion paradigm: Behavioural experiment

We are investigating whether adults with ASD show the same advantage for predictable targets over unpredictable targets as typical controls. In the present experiment, adults with ASD and typical individuals will have to state whether they detected a target which was presented either in-time (predictable) or out-of-time (unpredictable) with the illusory motion path created by two flashing squares. The rate at which participants detect both targets will be compared between the two groups. If low-level information is more highly weighted, then adults with ASD will perceive predictable and unpredictable events with the same rate, whereas control subjects will show an advantage for detecting predictable targets

Additional file 2 of Biological motion perception in autism spectrum disorder: a meta-analysis

Additional file 2. Weight of Evidence analysis. File includes the weight of evidence criteria for scoring and the summary statistics for Weight of Evidence scores

Additional file 1 of Biological motion perception in autism spectrum disorder: a meta-analysis

Additional file 1. Search strategies and number of records per database. File includes the search strategies used for the extraction of the papers from the five electronic databases mentioned in text and a table with the number of records extracted from each

Patterns of Saliency and Semantic Features Distinguish Gaze of Expert and Novice Viewers of Surveillance Footage

When viewing the actions of others, we not only see patterns of body movements, but we also "see" the intentions and social relations of people. Experienced forensic examiners—Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) operators—have been shown to convey superior performance in identifying and predicting hostile intentions from surveillance footages than novices. However, it remains largely unknown what visual content CCTV operators actively attend to, and whether CCTV operators develop different strategies for active information seeking from what novices do. Here, we conducted computational analysis for the gaze-centered stimuli captured by experienced CCTV operators and novices' eye movements when viewing the same surveillance footage. Low-level image features were extracted by a visual saliency model, whereas object-level semantic features were extracted by a deep convolutional neural network (DCNN), AlexNet, from gaze-centered regions. We found that the looking behavior of CCTV operators differs from novices by actively attending to different patterns of saliency and semantic features in both low-level and high-level visual processing. Expertise in selectively attending to informative features at different levels of visual hierarchy may play an important role in facilitating the efficient detection of social relationships between agents and the prediction of harmful intentions