Increased influence of prior choices on perceptual decisions in autism

Helen Feigin, Shir Shalom-Sperber, Ditza A. Zachor, Adam Zaidel

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

11 Scopus citations

Abstract

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) manifests sensory and perceptual atypicalities. Recent theories suggest that these may reflect a reduced influence of prior information in ASD. Some studies have found reduced adaptation to recent sensory stimuli in ASD. However, the effects of prior stimuli and prior perceptual choices can counteract one-another. Here, we investigated this using two different tasks (in two different cohorts): (i) visual location discrimination and (ii) multisensory (visual-vestibular) heading discrimination. We fit the data using a logistic regression model to dissociate the specific effects of prior stimuli and prior choices. In both tasks, perceptual decisions were biased toward recent choices. Notably, the ‘attractive’ effect of prior choices was significantly larger in ASD (in both tasks and cohorts), while there was no difference in the influence of prior stimuli. These results challenge theories of reduced priors in ASD, and rather suggest an increased consistency bias for perceptual decisions in ASD.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere61595
JournaleLife
Volume10
DOIs
StatePublished - 7 Jul 2021

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