Table 1.
Participant information.
Figure 1.
A) The memory paradigm. A study phase consisting of 10 items per category (faces and cars, or bodies and places), each presented for 3 s at the center of the screen, was followed by a 2AFC test phase consisting of 10 pairs of stimuli per category (one studied, one new). B) The perception paradigm. Perceptual discrimination was tested for the four categories (faces, cars, bodies, and places) via an immediate 2AFC match-to-sample task. In detail, a target item was presented for 1 s at the center of the screen, and immediately followed by a test pair of stimuli side-by-side. Each test pair included the target item and a distractor item created by morphing the target item towards a different-identity exemplar of the same category. C) Morph continua. One example from each stimulus category for the morph continua is shown. There were ten morph continua per category.
Figure 2.
Memory accuracy in percent correct for each of the four stimulus categories for children with ASD versus age and IQ-matched typical children. Results indicate a deficit in face and body memory in children with ASD. Chance was 50% indicated by the horizontal line. Error bars denote SEM. ** denotes p<.01, *** denotes p<.001.
Figure 3.
Perceptual discrimination threshold (morph-level difference necessary to perform at 75% correct) for the four categories for children with ASD versus age and IQ-matched typical children. Results indicate deficits in body perception in children with ASD. Error bars denote SEM. *** denotes p<.001.
Figure 4.
Direct comparison between memory and perception data.
Mean across ASD participants of the standardized score for each participant (i.e., the standard deviation of each participant from the typical population) for each stimulus category for memory (left) and perception (right). Values below zero indicate an impairment in ASD. ** denotes p<.01.