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. 2009 Dec;47(14):3275-8.
doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2009.07.010. Epub 2009 Jul 24.

Reduced sensitivity to minimum-jerk biological motion in autism spectrum conditions

Jennifer Cook  1 , Ayse Pinar Saygin, Rachel Swain, Sarah-Jayne Blakemore
Affiliations

Reduced sensitivity to minimum-jerk biological motion in autism spectrum conditions

Jennifer Cook et al. Neuropsychologia. 2009 Dec.

Abstract

We compared psychophysical thresholds for biological and non-biological motion detection in adults with autism spectrum conditions (ASCs) and controls. Participants watched animations of a biological stimulus (a moving hand) or a non-biological stimulus (a falling tennis ball). The velocity profile of the movement was varied between 100% natural motion (minimum-jerk (MJ) for the hand; gravitational (G) for the ball) and 100% constant velocity (CV). Participants were asked to judge which animation was 'less natural' in a two-interval forced-choice paradigm and thresholds were estimated adaptively. There was a significant interaction between group and condition. Thresholds in the MJ condition were lower than in the G condition for the NC group whereas there was no difference between the thresholds in the two conditions for the ASC group. Thus, unlike the controls, the ASC group did not show an increased sensitivity for perturbation to biological over non-biological velocity profiles.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Participants watched pairs of animations that showed a biological stimulus (a hand) or a non-biological stimulus (a tennis ball) moving across the screen. On each trial, the velocity profile of the movement was either 100% natural motion (minimum-jerk in the biological condition; gravitational in the non-biological condition), or 100% constant velocity or some linear combination of the two extremes. In each trial, participants were shown a ‘reference’ animation, which was always a combination of 85% natural motion and 15% constant velocity, and a ‘target’ animation, in which the ratio of constant velocity to natural motion varied according to performance. The task was to judge which was less natural.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
There was a significant interaction between group and condition driven by lower thresholds in the MJ condition than in the G condition for the NC group but not for the ASC group.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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