Abstract
This study aimed to explore the perception of different components of biological movement in individuals with autism and Asperger syndrome. The ability to recognize a person’s actions, subjective states, emotions, and objects conveyed by moving point-light displays was assessed in 19 participants with autism and 19 comparable typical control participants. Results showed that the participants with autism were as able as controls to name point-light displays of non-human objects and human actions. In contrast, they were significantly poorer at labeling emotional displays, suggesting that they are specifically impaired in attending to emotional states. Most studies have highlighted an emotional deficit in facial expression perception; our results extend this hypothesized deficit to the perception and interpretation of whole-body biological movements.
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Notes
A neuropsychologist (CR) and a physician (H.D, 5th author) conducted the ADI-R interview.
Although the Hubert et al. task was administered to the same participants it is unlikely that carry over effects would be responsible for poorer performance. In fact it would be expected to improve performance. In any case only emotions were used in the Hubert et al. (in press) study and some participants were enrolled in the current task before the Hubert et al. (in press) task.
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Acknowledgments
Authors are especially indebted to the autistic and control adults and adolescents who participated in this study. This research was funded by a grant from France Telecom to BW and by SEDSU (FP6-2003-NEST-PATH).
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An erratum to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10803-007-0378-0
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Hubert, B., Wicker, B., Moore, D.G. et al. Brief Report: Recognition of Emotional and Non-emotional Biological Motion in Individuals with Autistic Spectrum Disorders. J Autism Dev Disord 37, 1386–1392 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-006-0275-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-006-0275-y