Increased influence of prior choices on perceptual decisions in autism

Abstract
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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.

Data availability

The data and analysis code for the location discrimination experiments (i.e., the new data from this study) have been uploaded to github and can be found at https://github.com/HF-GH/ASD.

Article and author information

Author details

Helen Feigin

Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Shir Shalom-Sperber

Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Ditza A Zachor

The Autism Center/ALUT, Shamir Medical Center, Zerifin, Israel

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Adam Zaidel

Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

For correspondence
adam.zaidel@biu.ac.il

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-4405-8717

Funding

The Israeli Centers of Research Excellence (Center No. 51/11)

Adam Zaidel

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Human subjects: This study was approved by the institutional Helsinki committee at The Shamir Medical Center (0214-15-ASF) and the internal review board at Bar-Ilan University. All participants (and one of their caregivers) signed informed consent.

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.