In the Eye of the Beholder: Rapid Visual Perception of Real-Life Scenes by Young Adults with and Without ASD

Typically developing (TD) adults are able to extract global information from natural images and to categorize them within a single glance. This study aimed at extending these findings to individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) using a free description open-encoding paradigm. Participants were asked to freely describe what they saw when looking at briefly presented real-life photographs. Our results show subtle but consistent group-level differences. More specifically, individuals with ASD spontaneously reported the presence of people in the display less frequently than TD participants, and they grasped the gist of the scene less well. These findings argue for a less efficient rapid feedforward processing of global semantic aspects and a less spontaneous interpretation of socially salient information in ASD.