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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...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Hadad, Bat-Sheva, Schwartz, Sivan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2019
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.
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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
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