Spatial frequency priming of scene perception in adolescents with and without ASD

While most Typically Developing (TD) participants have a coarse-to-fine processing style, people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) seem to be less globally and more locally biased when processing visual information. The stimulus-specific spatial frequency content might be directly relevant to determine this temporal hierarchy of visual information processing in people with and without ASD. In this study, we implemented a semantic priming task in which (in)congruent coarse and/or fine spatial information preceded target categorization. In the first experiment, we presented nonsocial images of real-life scenes either as an unfiltered picture or solely defined by Low or High Spatial Frequency (LSF or HSF, resp.) information. In a second experiment, we also used hybrid images, consisting of overlaid LSF and HSF information from these scenes. Such images were used because they contain multiplex spatial frequency scale information (e.g., coarse (LSF) and fine (HSF) information from two different scenes) and therefore allow the investigation of scale-dependent recognition. Interestingly, our results indicated that adolescents with ASD, compared to TD adolescents, made more categorization errors and needed more time to process the prime stimuli. Simultaneously however, they also showed (1) an age-dependent improvement in categorization performance, and (2) a larger priming effect when fine spatial frequency prime information was presented longer. This pattern of results indicates a later-stage advantage in the attention-focused processing of detailed spatial information in ASD. We argue that this does not contradict a less efficient early-stage and pre-attentive global processing stage in people with ASD.status: publishe