Reduced face identity aftereffects in relatives of children with autism

被引:42
作者
Fiorentini, Chiara [1 ,2 ,3 ]
Gray, Laura [4 ]
Rhodes, Gillian [3 ]
Jeffery, Linda [3 ]
Pellicano, Elizabeth [3 ,4 ]
机构
[1] Australian Natl Univ, Dept Psychol, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia
[2] UCL, Inst Child Hlth, London WC1E 6BT, England
[3] Univ Western Australia, ARC Ctr Excellence Cognit & Its Disorders, Sch Psychol, Nedlands, WA 6009, Australia
[4] Univ London, CRAE, Inst Educ, London WC1E 7HU, England
基金
澳大利亚研究理事会; 瑞士国家科学基金会;
关键词
Autism; Endophenotype; Faces; Aftereffects; Adaptation; ENDOPHENOTYPE CONCEPT; MULTIPLE-INCIDENCE; BROADER PHENOTYPE; FAMILY-HISTORY; SPECTRUM; INDIVIDUALS; RECOGNITION; ADAPTATION; AMYGDALA; PARENTS;
D O I
10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2012.08.019
中图分类号
B84 [心理学]; C [社会科学总论]; Q98 [人类学];
学科分类号
03 ; 0303 ; 030303 ; 04 ; 0402 ;
摘要
Autism is a pervasive developmental condition with complex aetiology. To aid the discovery of genetic mechanisms, researchers have turned towards identifying potential endophenotypes - subtle neurobiological or neurocognitive traits present in individuals with autism and their "unaffected" relatives. Previous research has shown that relatives of individuals with autism exhibit face processing atypicalities, which are similar in nature albeit of lesser degree, to those found in children and adults with autism. Yet very few studies have examined the underlying mechanisms responsible for such atypicalities. Here, we investigated whether atypicalities in adaptive norm-based coding of faces are present in relatives of children with autism, similar to those previously reported in children with autism. To test this possibility, we administered a face identity aftereffect task in which adaptation to a particular face biases perception towards the opposite identity, so that a previously neutral face (i.e., the average face) takes on the computationally opposite identity. Parents and siblings of individuals with autism showed smaller aftereffects compared to parents and siblings of typically developing children, especially so when the adapting stimuli were located further away from the average face. In addition, both groups showed stronger aftereffects for adaptors far from the average than for adaptors closer to the average. These results suggest that, in relatives of children with autism, face-coding mechanism are similar (i.e., norm-based) but less efficient than in relatives of typical children. This finding points towards the possibility that diminished adaptive mechanisms might represent a neurocognitive endophenotype for autism. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
引用
收藏
页码:2926 / 2932
页数:7
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