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. 2009 Feb;39(2):339-49.
doi: 10.1007/s10803-008-0630-2. Epub 2008 Aug 8.

A specific autistic trait that modulates visuospatial illusion susceptibility

Elizabeth Walter  1 , Paul Dassonville, Tiana M Bochsler
Affiliations

A specific autistic trait that modulates visuospatial illusion susceptibility

Elizabeth Walter et al. J Autism Dev Disord. 2009 Feb.

Abstract

Although several accounts of autism have predicted that the disorder should be associated with a decreased susceptibility to visual illusions, previous experimental results have been mixed. This study examined whether a link between autism and illusion susceptibility can be more convincingly demonstrated by assessing the relationships between susceptibility and the extent to which several individual autistic traits are exhibited as a continuum in a population of college students. A significant relationship was observed between the systemizing trait and susceptibility to a subset of the tested illusions (the rod-and-frame, Roelofs, Ponzo and Poggendorff illusions). These results provide support for the idea that autism involves an imbalance between the processing of local and global cues, more heavily weighted toward local features than in the typically developed individual.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Visual stimuli (not drawn to scale) used to test magnitude of susceptibilities in each of eight illusions, with gray arrows (not visible to participants) denoting the parameters (i.e., target location, orientation, length or size) under participant control
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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