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. 2011 Oct;41(10):1429-35.
doi: 10.1007/s10803-010-1150-4.

Brief report: face-specific recognition deficits in young children with autism spectrum disorders

Jessica Bradshaw  1 , Frederick Shic, Katarzyna Chawarska
Affiliations

Brief report: face-specific recognition deficits in young children with autism spectrum disorders

Jessica Bradshaw et al. J Autism Dev Disord. 2011 Oct.

Abstract

This study used eyetracking to investigate the ability of young children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) to recognize social (faces) and nonsocial (simple objects and complex block patterns) stimuli using the visual paired comparison (VPC) paradigm. Typically developing (TD) children showed evidence for recognition of faces and simple objects, but not complex block patterns. Children with ASD were successful at recognizing novel objects and block patterns, but showed no evidence for face recognition. These findings suggest that young children with ASD have specific impairments in face recognition, and that they may have advantage over TD controls when processing complex nonsocial stimuli.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Images employed in object (a), block (b), and face (c) conditions
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Example of visual paired comparison paradigm. * Duration of familiarization was dependent on the child’s looking time; the 10 s shown here indicates 10 s of accumulated looking
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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