Is there a limit to the superiority of individuals with ASD in visual search?

Hessels, Roy S.; Hooge, I.C.T.; Snijders, Tineke M.; Kemner, Chantal

doi:10.1007/s10803-013-1886-8

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Add to Basket

Local TagsStatisticsRelease HistoryDetailsSummary

Released

Journal Article

Is there a limit to the superiority of individuals with ASD in visual search?

MPS-Authors

There are no MPG-Authors available

Locator

There are no locators available

Fulltext (public)

Hessels2014.pdf
(Publisher version), 274KB

Supplementary Material (public)

There is no public supplementary material available

Citation

Hessels, R. S., Hooge, I., Snijders, T. M., & Kemner, C. (2014). Is there a limit to the superiority of individuals with ASD in visual search? Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 44, 443-451. doi:10.1007/s10803-013-1886-8.

Cite as: http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-002B-A4C4-A

Abstract

Superiority in visual search for individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a well-reported finding. We administered two visual search tasks to individuals with ASD and matched controls. One showed no difference between the groups, and one did show the expected superior performance for individuals with ASD. These results offer an explanation, formulated in terms of load theory. We suggest that there is a limit to the superiority in visual search for individuals with ASD, related to the perceptual load of the stimuli. When perceptual load becomes so high that no additional task-(ir)relevant information can be processed, performance will be based on single stimulus identification, in which no differences between individuals with ASD and controls have been demonstrated