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An examination of active inference in autistic adults using immersive virtual reality
The integration of prior expectations, sensory information, and environmental volatility is proposed to be atypical in Autism Spectrum Disorder, yet few studies have tested these predictive processes in active movement tasks. To address this gap in the research, we used an immersive virtual-reality...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8514518/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34645899 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-99864-y |
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author | Arthur, Tom Harris, David Buckingham, Gavin Brosnan, Mark Wilson, Mark Williams, Genevieve Vine, Sam |
author_facet | Arthur, Tom Harris, David Buckingham, Gavin Brosnan, Mark Wilson, Mark Williams, Genevieve Vine, Sam |
author_sort | Arthur, Tom |
collection | PubMed |
description | The integration of prior expectations, sensory information, and environmental volatility is proposed to be atypical in Autism Spectrum Disorder, yet few studies have tested these predictive processes in active movement tasks. To address this gap in the research, we used an immersive virtual-reality racquetball paradigm to explore how visual sampling behaviours and movement kinematics are adjusted in relation to unexpected, uncertain, and volatile changes in environmental statistics. We found that prior expectations concerning ball ‘bounciness’ affected sensorimotor control in both autistic and neurotypical participants, with all individuals using prediction-driven gaze strategies to track the virtual ball. However, autistic participants showed substantial differences in visuomotor behaviour when environmental conditions were more volatile. Specifically, uncertainty-related performance difficulties in these conditions were accompanied by atypical movement kinematics and visual sampling responses. Results support proposals that autistic people overestimate the volatility of sensory environments, and suggest that context-sensitive differences in active inference could explain a range of movement-related difficulties in autism. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8514518 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-85145182021-10-14 An examination of active inference in autistic adults using immersive virtual reality Arthur, Tom Harris, David Buckingham, Gavin Brosnan, Mark Wilson, Mark Williams, Genevieve Vine, Sam Sci Rep Article The integration of prior expectations, sensory information, and environmental volatility is proposed to be atypical in Autism Spectrum Disorder, yet few studies have tested these predictive processes in active movement tasks. To address this gap in the research, we used an immersive virtual-reality racquetball paradigm to explore how visual sampling behaviours and movement kinematics are adjusted in relation to unexpected, uncertain, and volatile changes in environmental statistics. We found that prior expectations concerning ball ‘bounciness’ affected sensorimotor control in both autistic and neurotypical participants, with all individuals using prediction-driven gaze strategies to track the virtual ball. However, autistic participants showed substantial differences in visuomotor behaviour when environmental conditions were more volatile. Specifically, uncertainty-related performance difficulties in these conditions were accompanied by atypical movement kinematics and visual sampling responses. Results support proposals that autistic people overestimate the volatility of sensory environments, and suggest that context-sensitive differences in active inference could explain a range of movement-related difficulties in autism. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-10-13 /pmc/articles/PMC8514518/ /pubmed/34645899 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-99864-y Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Arthur, Tom Harris, David Buckingham, Gavin Brosnan, Mark Wilson, Mark Williams, Genevieve Vine, Sam An examination of active inference in autistic adults using immersive virtual reality |
title | An examination of active inference in autistic adults using immersive virtual reality |
title_full | An examination of active inference in autistic adults using immersive virtual reality |
title_fullStr | An examination of active inference in autistic adults using immersive virtual reality |
title_full_unstemmed | An examination of active inference in autistic adults using immersive virtual reality |
title_short | An examination of active inference in autistic adults using immersive virtual reality |
title_sort | examination of active inference in autistic adults using immersive virtual reality |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8514518/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34645899 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-99864-y |
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