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Perception in autism does not adhere to Weber’s law
Perceptual atypicalities are a widely acknowledged but poorly understood feature of autism. We demonstrate here a striking violation of one of the most adaptive psychophysical computations – Weber’s law – in high-functioning individuals with autism. JNDs based on the best-fitting psychometric functi...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6420264/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30829198 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.42223 |
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author | Hadad, Bat-Sheva Schwartz, Sivan |
author_facet | Hadad, Bat-Sheva Schwartz, Sivan |
author_sort | Hadad, Bat-Sheva |
collection | PubMed |
description | Perceptual atypicalities are a widely acknowledged but poorly understood feature of autism. We demonstrate here a striking violation of one of the most adaptive psychophysical computations – Weber’s law – in high-functioning individuals with autism. JNDs based on the best-fitting psychometric functions were measured for size visual judgments (Exp. 1), weight haptic discrimination (Exp. 2), and illusive perception of weight (brightness-weight illusion; Exp. 3). Results for the typically developed group confirmed Weber’s law, demonstrating a linear increase in JNDs with intensity, resulting in constant fractions across intensities. The results for the ASD, in contrast, showed no scaling of JNDs with intensity; instead, fractions decreased linearly with intensity. In striking contrast to its consistency in typical perception, Weber’s law does not hold for visual and haptic perception in autism. These robust modulations in psychophysical computations, demonstrated for different domains of perception, suggest a modality-independent, low-level mechanism driving altered perception in autism. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6420264 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-64202642019-03-18 Perception in autism does not adhere to Weber’s law Hadad, Bat-Sheva Schwartz, Sivan eLife Neuroscience Perceptual atypicalities are a widely acknowledged but poorly understood feature of autism. We demonstrate here a striking violation of one of the most adaptive psychophysical computations – Weber’s law – in high-functioning individuals with autism. JNDs based on the best-fitting psychometric functions were measured for size visual judgments (Exp. 1), weight haptic discrimination (Exp. 2), and illusive perception of weight (brightness-weight illusion; Exp. 3). Results for the typically developed group confirmed Weber’s law, demonstrating a linear increase in JNDs with intensity, resulting in constant fractions across intensities. The results for the ASD, in contrast, showed no scaling of JNDs with intensity; instead, fractions decreased linearly with intensity. In striking contrast to its consistency in typical perception, Weber’s law does not hold for visual and haptic perception in autism. These robust modulations in psychophysical computations, demonstrated for different domains of perception, suggest a modality-independent, low-level mechanism driving altered perception in autism. eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2019-03-04 /pmc/articles/PMC6420264/ /pubmed/30829198 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.42223 Text en © 2019, Hadad and Schwartz http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Neuroscience Hadad, Bat-Sheva Schwartz, Sivan Perception in autism does not adhere to Weber’s law |
title | Perception in autism does not adhere to Weber’s law |
title_full | Perception in autism does not adhere to Weber’s law |
title_fullStr | Perception in autism does not adhere to Weber’s law |
title_full_unstemmed | Perception in autism does not adhere to Weber’s law |
title_short | Perception in autism does not adhere to Weber’s law |
title_sort | perception in autism does not adhere to weber’s law |
topic | Neuroscience |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6420264/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30829198 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.42223 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT hadadbatsheva perceptioninautismdoesnotadheretoweberslaw AT schwartzsivan perceptioninautismdoesnotadheretoweberslaw |