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Comparative Study
. 2016 May;19(3):452-68.
doi: 10.1111/desc.12312. Epub 2015 May 25.

Rethinking the concepts of 'local or global processors': evidence from Williams syndrome, Down syndrome, and Autism Spectrum Disorders

Dean D'Souza  1 , Rhonda Booth  2 , Monica Connolly  1 , Francesca Happé  3 , Annette Karmiloff-Smith  1
Affiliations
Comparative Study

Rethinking the concepts of 'local or global processors': evidence from Williams syndrome, Down syndrome, and Autism Spectrum Disorders

Dean D'Souza et al. Dev Sci. 2016 May.

Abstract

Both Williams syndrome (WS) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have been characterized as preferentially processing local information, whereas in Down syndrome (DS) the reported tendency is to process stimuli globally. We designed a cross-syndrome, cross-task comparison to reveal similarities and differences in local/global processing in these disorders. Our in-depth study compared local/global processing across modalities (auditory-verbal/visuo-spatial) and levels of processing (high/low) in the three syndromes. Despite claims in the literature, participants with ASD or WS failed to show a consistent local processing bias, while those with DS failed to show a reliable global processing bias. Depending on the nature of the stimuli and the task, both local and global processing biases were evident in all three neurodevelopmental disorders. These findings indicate that individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders cannot simply be characterized as local or global processors.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Examples of one stimuli type (Tf), presented at three different densities: (a), (b), and (c)
Figure 2
Figure 2. The Navon task: presentation of stimuli
Figure 3
Figure 3. Example stimuli from the Fragmented Picture Completion task
Figure 4
Figure 4. Mean response time (in seconds) for correct detection of the phoneme at initial and medial/final positions for the ASD and Control groups. Error bars represent standard error of the mean
Figure 5
Figure 5. Mean response time (in seconds) for correct detection of the phoneme at initial and medial/final positions for the DS and WS groups. Error bars represent standard error of the mean
Figure 6
Figure 6. Proportion of local matches (local / [local + global]) for each group. Error bars represent standard error of the mean
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