Adults with autism are less proficient in identifying biological motion actions portrayed with point‐light displays

BACKGROUND: Whether individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have impairments with biological motion perception has been debated. The present study examined the ability to identify point‐light‐displayed (PLD) human actions in neurotypical (NT) adults and adults with ASD. METHOD: Twenty‐seven adults with ASD (mean age = 28.36) and 30 NT adults (mean age = 22.45) were tested. Both groups viewed 10 different biological motion actions contacting an object/tool and 10 without making contact. Each action was presented twice, and participant's naming responses and reaction times were recorded. RESULTS: The ASD group had a significantly lower total number of correct items (M = 29.30 ± 5.08 out of 40) and longer response time (M = 4550 ± 1442 ms) than NT group (M = 32.77 ± 2.78; M = 3556 ± 1148 ms). Both groups were better at naming the actions without objects (ASD group: 17.33 ± 2.30, NT group: 18.67 ± 1.30) than those with objects (ASD group: 11.96 ± 3.57, NT group: 14.10 ± 1.97). Correlation analyses showed that individuals with higher Autism‐spectrum Quotient scale scores tended to make more errors and responded more slowly. CONCLUSION: Adults with ASD were able to identify human point‐light display biological motion actions much better than chance; however, they were less proficient compared with NT adults in terms of accuracy and speed, regardless of action type.