Get the Picture? Goodness of Image Organization Contributes to Image Memorability.

According to Gestalt psychologists, goodness is a crucial variable for image organization. We hypothesized that these differences in goodness contribute to variability in image memorability. Building on this, we predicted that two characteristics of good organizations, (i) fast, efficient processing and (ii) robustness against transformations (e.g., shrinking), would be characteristic of memorable images. Two planned (Study 1, Study 2) and one follow-up (Study 3) study were conducted to test this. Study 1 operationalized fast processing as accuracy in a rapid-scene categorization task ("categorizability"). Study 2 operationalized robustness against shrinking as reaction time in a thumbnail search task ("shrinkability"). We used 44 real-life scene images of 14 semantic categories from a previous memorability study. Each image was assigned a categorizability and shrinkability score. The predicted positive relation between categorizability and memorability was not observed in Study 1. A post-hoc explanation attributed this null result to a masking role of image distinctiveness. Furthermore, memorable images were located faster in the thumbnail search task, as predicted, but Study 2 could not rule whether this was merely a result of their distinctiveness. To elucidate these results, Study 3 quantified the images on distinctiveness and statistically controlled for this variable in a reanalysis of Study 1 and Study 2. When distinctiveness was controlled for, categorizability and memorability did show a significant positive correlation. Moreover, the results also argued against the alternative explanation of the results of Study 2. Taken together, the results support the hypothesis that goodness of organization contributes to image memorability.

Intact perceptual bias in autism contradicts the decreased normalization model.

One recent, promising account of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) situates the cause of the disorder in an atypicality in basic neural information processing, more specifically in how activity of one neuron is modulated by neighboring neurons. The canonical neural computation that implements such contextual influence is called divisive (or suppressive) normalization. The account proposes that this normalization is reduced in ASD. We tested one fundamental prediction of this model for low-level perception, namely that individuals with ASD would show reduced cross-orientation suppression (leading to an illusory tilt perception). 11 young adults with an ASD diagnosis and 12 age-, gender-, and IQ-matched control participants performed a psychophysical orientation perception task with compound grating stimuli. Illusory tilt perception did not differ significantly between groups, indicating typical divisive normalization in individuals with ASD. In fact, all individuals with ASD showed a considerable orientation bias. There was also no correlation between illusory tilt perception and autistic traits as measured by the Social Responsiveness Scale. These results provide clear evidence against the decreased divisive normalization model of ASD in low-level perception, where divisive normalization is best characterized. We evaluate the broader existing evidence for this model and propose ways to salvage and refine the model.

Parenting adolescents with ASD: A multimethod study.

A number of studies have concluded that parents of children with ASD experience high levels of parenting stress. However, little is known about their parenting behaviors. Especially few studies investigated parenting in adolescence, although this period is associated with additional challenges for both adolescents and their parents. In the present study, a multi-method approach was used, combining data from a self-report questionnaire and observation of mother-child interactions during different semi-structured (e.g., inventing and building a vehicle of the future with construction toys) and structured tasks (e.g., solving marble maze). Linear mixed models (LMM) were used to compare the means of parenting behaviors among mothers of adolescents with (n = 44) and without ASD (n = 38), aged 12 to 16 years old. During the observations, mothers of adolescents with ASD showed more sensitivity and creativity, compared to the general population control group. In addition, mothers in the ASD group reported on the self-report questionnaire to adapt the environment more, for example, by establishing routines. Furthermore, this study investigated the role of maternal characteristics, that is, ASD characteristics and parenting stress. Parenting stress was associated with less self-reported positive parenting. Higher levels of ASD characteristics of the mother were related to more negativity and less sensitivity during the observation, and more self-reported harsh punishment and adapting the environment. This study additionally examined whether the impact of these maternal characteristics was the same across the two groups. Whereas group by parenting stress interaction effects were not significant for any of the observed and self-reported parenting behaviors, significant group by ASD characteristics interaction effects were noticed for self-reported harsh punishment and adapting the environment. Autism Res 2018, 11: 1000-1010. © 2018 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: A number of studies have concluded that parents of children with ASD experience high levels of parenting stress. However, little is known about their parenting behaviors. Especially parenting in adolescence remains under investigated, although this period is associated with additional challenges for both adolescents and their parents. In this study, 44 adolescents with ASD and a control group of 38 adolescents without ASD, aged 12-16 years old, participated together with their mother. We compared parenting behaviors between the two groups, based on observations of mother-child interactions and a questionnaire that was filled out by the mother. During the observation, mothers of adolescents with ASD showed more sensitivity and creativity, compared to the control group. In addition, the questionnaire responses indicated that mothers in the ASD group adapted the environment more by for example, establishing routines. Furthermore, this study investigated the role of parenting stress and ASD characteristics of the mother on parenting behavior. Parenting stress was associated with less self-reported positive parenting. Higher levels of ASD characteristics of the mother were related to more negativity and less sensitivity during the observation in both groups, and more self-reported harsh punishment and adapting the environment in the control group only.

Change detection of meaningful objects in real-world scenes in adolescents with and without autism spectrum disorder.

Previous research suggested that adolescents with autism spectrum disorder are better than typically developing children in detecting local, non-social details within complex visual scenes. To better understand these differences, we used the image database by Sareen et al., containing the size and on-screen location information of all changes in the images, in a change blindness paradigm. In this task, an original and a modified real-world scene, separated by a gray blank, alternate repeatedly until observers detect the change. Our results indicated that participants with and without autism spectrum disorder performed similarly when scenes were presented upright, but that only the performance of the typically developing adolescents became worse in the inverted scene condition. In this condition, the correlation between performance and both image difficulty and change predictability was significantly weaker in autism spectrum disorder than in typically developing participants. We suggest that these findings result from a more locally biased search strategy in people with autism spectrum disorder, compared to typically developing participants, in tasks in which the rapid processing of global information does not help to improve change detection performance. Finally, although we found change location, change size, and age to influence participant performance, none of these was directly linked to the observed group-level differences.

Intact animacy perception during chase detection in ASD.

We explored the strength of implicit social inferences in adolescents with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) using a chasing paradigm in which participants judged the absence/presence of a chase within a display of four seemingly randomly moving dots. While two of these dots always moved randomly, the two others could fulfill the role of being either the chasing (wolf) or chased (sheep) dot. In the chase-present (but not the chase-absent) trials the wolf displayed chasing behavior defined by the degree to which the dot reliably moved towards the sheep (chasing subtlety). Previous research indicated that chasing subtlety strongly influenced chase detection in typically developing (TD) adults. We intended to replicate and extend this finding to adolescents with and without ASD, while also adding either a social or a non-social cue to the displays. Our results confirmed the importance of chasing subtlety and indicated that adding social, but not non-social, information further improved chase detection performance. Interestingly, the performance of adolescents with ASD was less dependent on chasing subtlety than that of their TD counterparts. Nonetheless, adolescents with and without ASD did not differ in their use of the added social (or non-social) cue.

Spatial Frequency Priming of Scene Perception in Adolescents With and Without ASD.

While most typically developing (TD) participants have a coarse-to-fine processing style, people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) seem to be less globally and more locally biased when processing visual information. The stimulus-specific spatial frequency content might be directly relevant to determine this temporal hierarchy of visual information processing in people with and without ASD. We implemented a semantic priming task in which (in)congruent coarse and/or fine spatial information preceded target categorization. Our results indicated that adolescents with ASD made more categorization errors than TD adolescents and needed more time to process the prime stimuli. Simultaneously, however, our findings argued for a processing advantage in ASD, when the prime stimulus contains detailed spatial information and presentation time permits explicit visual processing.

Hierarchical Letters in ASD: High Stimulus Variability Under Different Attentional Modes.

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 well as a global and local selective attention task. The results revealed global-to-local and local-to-global interference in ASD, to the same extent as in the TD group. Both groups struggled with the same type of stimuli (i.e., ignoring the global level information) and performed similar in all three tasks. Future studies on (visual) information processing in ASD should pursue the impact of stimulus noise and trial-by-trial uncertainty further.

Priming Facial Gender and Emotional Valence: The Influence of Spatial Frequency on Face Perception in ASD.

Adolescents with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD) performed two priming experiments in which they implicitly processed a prime stimulus, containing high and/or low spatial frequency information, and then explicitly categorized a target face either as male/female (gender task) or as positive/negative (Valence task). Adolescents with ASD made more categorization errors than typically developing adolescents. They also showed an age-dependent improvement in categorization speed and had more difficulties with categorizing facial expressions than gender. However, in neither of the categorization tasks, we found group differences in the processing of coarse versus fine prime information. This contradicted our expectations, and indicated that the perceptual differences between adolescents with and without ASD critically depended on the processing time available for the primes.

The Time-Course of Ultrarapid Categorization: The Influence of Scene Congruency and Top-Down Processing.

Although categorization can take place at different levels of abstraction, classic studies on semantic labeling identified the basic level, for example, dog, as entry point for categorization. Ultrarapid categorization tasks have contradicted these findings, indicating that participants are faster at detecting superordinate-level information, for example, animal, in a complex visual image. We argue that both seemingly contradictive findings can be reconciled within the framework of parallel distributed processing and its successor Leabra (Local, Error-driven and Associative, Biologically Realistic Algorithm). The current study aimed at verifying this prediction in an ultrarapid categorization task with a dynamically changing presentation time (PT) for each briefly presented object, followed by a perceptual mask. Furthermore, we manipulated two defining task variables: level of categorization (basic vs. superordinate categorization) and object presentation mode (object-in-isolation vs. object-in-context). In contradiction with previous ultrarapid categorization research, focusing on reaction time, we used accuracy as our main dependent variable. Results indicated a consistent superordinate processing advantage, coinciding with an overall improvement in performance with longer PT and a significantly more accurate detection of objects in isolation, compared with objects in context, at lower stimulus PT. This contextual disadvantage disappeared when PT increased, indicating that figure-ground separation with recurrent processing is vital for meaningful contextual processing to occur.

In the Eye of the Beholder: Rapid Visual Perception of Real-Life Scenes by Young Adults with and Without ASD.

Typically developing (TD) adults are able to extract global information from natural images and to categorize them within a single glance. This study aimed at extending these findings to individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) using a free description open-encoding paradigm. Participants were asked to freely describe what they saw when looking at briefly presented real-life photographs. Our results show subtle but consistent group-level differences. More specifically, individuals with ASD spontaneously reported the presence of people in the display less frequently than TD participants, and they grasped the gist of the scene less well. These findings argue for a less efficient rapid feedforward processing of global semantic aspects and a less spontaneous interpretation of socially salient information in ASD.

Ultra-Rapid Categorization of Meaningful Real-Life Scenes in Adults With and Without ASD.

In comparison to typically developing (TD) individuals, people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) appear to be worse in the fast extraction of the global meaning of a situation or picture. Ultra-rapid categorization [paradigm developed by Thorpe et al. (Nature 381:520-522, 1996)] involves such global information processing. We therefore tested a group of adults with and without ASD, without intellectual disability, on a set of ultra-rapid categorization tasks. Individuals with ASD performed equally well as TD individuals except when the task required the categorization of social interactions. These results argue against a general deficit in ultra-rapid gist perception in people with ASD, while suggesting a more specific problem with the fast processing of information about social relations.

Rapid gist perception of meaningful real-life scenes: Exploring individual and gender differences in multiple categorization tasks.

In everyday life, we are generally able to dynamically understand and adapt to socially (ir)elevant encounters, and to make appropriate decisions about these. All of this requires an impressive ability to directly filter and obtain the most informative aspects of a complex visual scene. Such rapid gist perception can be assessed in multiple ways. In the ultrafast categorization paradigm developed by Simon Thorpe et al. (1996), participants get a clear categorization task in advance and succeed at detecting the target object of interest (animal) almost perfectly (even with 20 ms exposures). Since this pioneering work, follow-up studies consistently reported population-level reaction time differences on different categorization tasks, indicating a superordinate advantage (animal versus dog) and effects of perceptual similarity (animals versus vehicles) and object category size (natural versus animal versus dog). In this study, we replicated and extended these separate findings by using a systematic collection of different categorization tasks (varying in presentation time, task demands, and stimuli) and focusing on individual differences in terms of e.g., gender and intelligence. In addition to replicating the main findings from the literature, we find subtle, yet consistent gender differences (women faster than men).