Unimpaired Perception of Social and Physical Causality,but Impaired Perception of Animacy in High FunctioningChildren with Autism

摘要

We investigated perception of social andphysical causality and animacy in simple motion events,for high-functioning children with autism (CA = 13,VMA = 9.6). Children matched 14 different animations topictures showing physical, social or non-causality. Incontrast to previous work, children with autism performedat a high level similar to VMA-matched controls, recog-nizing physical causality in launch and social causality inreaction events. The launch deficit previously found inyounger children with autism, possibly related to atten-tional/verbal difficulties, is apparently overcome with age.Some events involved squares moving non-rigidly, likeanimals. Children with autism had difficulties recognizingthis, extending the biological motion literature. However,animacy prompts amplified their attributions of socialcausality. Thus children with autism may overcome theiranimacy perception deficit strategically.