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In addition to those with savant skills, many individuals with autism spectrum conditions (ASCs) show superior perceptual and attentional skills relative to the general population. These superior skills and savant abilities raise important theoretical questions, including whether they develop as compensations for other underdeveloped cognitive mechanisms, and whether one skill is inversely related to another weakness via a common underlying neurocognitive mechanism. We discuss studies of perception and visual processing that show that this inverse hypothesis rarely holds true. Instead, they suggest that enhanced performance is not always accompanied by a complementary deficit and that there are undeniable difficulties in some aspects of perception that are not related to compensating strengths. Our discussion emphasizes the qualitative differences in perceptual processing revealed in these studies between individuals with and without ASCs. We argue that this research is important not only in furthering our understanding of the nature of the qualitative differences in perceptual processing in ASCs, but can also be used to highlight to society at large the exceptional skills and talent that individuals with ASCs are able to contribute in domains such as engineering, computing and mathematics that are highly valued in industry.

Linguistic labels (e.g., “chair”) seem to activate visual properties of the objects to which they refer. Here we investigated whether language-based activation of visual representations can affect the ability to simply detect the presence of an object. We used continuous flash suppression to suppress visual awareness of familiar objects while they were continuously presented to one eye. Participants made simple detection decisions, indicating whether they saw any image. Hearing a verbal label before the simple detection task changed performance relative to an uninformative cue baseline. Valid labels improved performance relative to no-label baseline trials. Invalid labels decreased performance. Labels affected both sensitivity (d ′) and response times. In addition, we found that the effectiveness of labels varied predictably as a function of the match between the shape of the stimulus and the shape denoted by the label. Together, the findings suggest that facilitated detection of invisible objects due to language occurs at a perceptual rather than semantic locus. We hypothesize that when information associated with verbal labels matches stimulus-driven activity, language can provide a boost to perception, propelling an otherwise invisible image into awareness.

This article explores the effects of two distinct retail choice architectures—those that organize assortments by attributes and those that organize items by benefits. Relative to attribute-based organizations, benefit-based organizations lead to more abstract construal and heighten similarity perceptions among items in an assortment. Such changes in similarity perceptions alter consumers’ strength of preference among items: when choosing from benefit- as opposed to attribute-based organizations, consumers select lower-priced items and are more similarly satisfied with their top choice as with a lower-ranked option. Further, consumers’ internal shopping objectives and orientations cued by the external organization may interact in ways that heighten similarity perceptions. Results suggest that abstract construal cues, regardless of whether they arise internally or externally, may dominate concrete cues in the type of shopping context under consideration.

The authors investigate how horizontal versus vertical displays of alternatives affect assortment processing, perceived variety, and subsequent choice. Horizontal (vs. vertical) displays are easier to process due to a match between the human binocular vision field (which is horizontal in direction) and the dominant direction of eye movements required for processing horizontal displays. It is demonstrated that this processing fluency allows people to browse information more efficiently, which increases perceived assortment variety and ultimately leads to more variety being chosen, and if the number of options chosen is allowed to vary, it leads to more options chosen. It is shown that because people see more variety in a horizontal (vs. vertical) display, they process a horizontal assortment more extensively. When more variety is positive, they find the choice task easier and have a higher level of satisfaction and confidence about their choices. When more variety is not necessarily positive, for example, in a choice of a single most-preferred option, these effects disappear. Two field studies, an eye-tracking study, and two lab studies support these conclusions.

Rodents rely on their whiskers as vital sensory tools for tactile perception, enabling them to distinguish textures and shapes. Ensuring the reliability and constancy of tactile perception under varying stimulus conditions remains a fascinating and fundamental inquiry. This study explores the impact of stimulus configurations, including whisker movement velocity and object spatial proximity, on texture discrimination and stability in rats. To address this issue, we employed three distinct approaches for our investigation. Stimulus configurations notably affected tactile inputs, altering whisker vibration’s kinetic and kinematic aspects with consistent effects across various textures. Through a texture discrimination task, rats exhibited consistent discrimination performance irrespective of changes in stimulus configuration. However, alterations in stimulus configuration significantly affected the rats’ ability to maintain stability in texture perception. Additionally, we investigated the influence of stimulus configurations on cortical neuronal responses by manipulating them experimentally. Notably, cortical neurons demonstrated substantial and intricate changes in firing rates without compromising the ability to discriminate between textures. Nevertheless, these changes resulted in a reduction in texture neuronal response stability. Stimulating multiple whiskers led to improved neuronal texture discrimination and maintained coding stability. These findings emphasize the importance of considering numerous factors and their interactions when studying the impact of stimulus configuration on neuronal responses and behavior.

Abstract Neurophysiological studies show that during tasks tapping cognitive control (like the flanker task), midfrontal theta (MFθ) oscillations are associated with conflict and error processing and neural top-down modulation of perceptual processing. What remains unknown is whether perceptual encoding of category-specific stimuli (e.g. body vs letters) used in flanker-like tasks is modulated by theta oscillations. To explore this issue, we delivered transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation (tACS) in the theta frequency band (6 Hz) over the medial frontal cortex (MFC) and the extra-striate body area (EBA), whereas healthy participants performed two variants of the classical flanker task, one with stimuli representing human hands (i.e. hand-flanker) and the other with stimuli representing coloured letters (i.e. letter-flanker). More specifically, we aimed at investigating whether θ-tACS involving a body-related area may modulate the long-range communication between neuronal populations underlying conflict monitoring and visuo-perceptual encoding of hand stimuli without affecting the conflict driven by letter stimuli. Results showed faster correct response times during θ-tACS in the hand-flanker compared with γ-tACS (40 Hz) and sham. Importantly, such an effect did not emerge in the letter-flanker. Our findings show that theta oscillations over midfrontal-occipital areas modulate bodily specific, stimulus content-driven aspects of cognitive control.

It is proposed that the perceived present is not a moment in time, but an information structure comprising an integrated set of products of perceptual processing. All information in the perceived present carries an informational time marker identifying it as “present”. This marker is exclusive to information in the perceived present. There are other kinds of time markers, such as ordinality (“this stimulus occurred before that one”) and duration (“this stimulus lasted for 50 ms”). These are different from the “present” time marker and may be attached to information regardless of whether it is in the perceived present or not. It is proposed that the perceived present is a very short-term and very high-capacity holding area for perceptual information. The maximum holding time for any given piece of information is ~100 ms: This is affected by the need to balance the value of informational persistence for further processing against the problem of obsolescence of the information. The main function of the perceived present is to facilitate access by other specialized, automatic processes.

Three experiments show that semantic primes can enhance perceptual fluency, resulting in higher liking of the perceived product. Specifically, semantic primes that cue the visual identifier of one of two products (e.g., a bottle of wine with a frog shown on the label) increase preference of the prime‐compatible target over another target (e.g., a wine without a frog on the label). This is observed even when exposure to the target is limited to levels associated with perceptual encoding of the target (experiment 1). Semantic priming of constructs compatible with perceptual features of the target increases liking of the target (experiments 2 and 3), and increased liking of the target is mediated by the target’s increased visual appeal (experiment 3).

The present study aimed to examine the links between a self-report measure known to be discriminative of autism (the AQ-10) and performance on the classic unidimensional absolute identification judgment task with 10 line lengths. The interest in this task is due to the fact that discriminating absolutely between such items is quite perceptually challenging and also that it is not very amenable to generalization. Importantly, there are two currently available views of perceptual learning in autism that suggest that those higher on the autism spectrum might have an advantage on this task. Results showed, however, that for N  = 291 typically developing individuals, higher scores on the AQ-10 (and also on a measure of the degree to which individuals self-report having a more spontaneous, activist-type learning style) tended to relate to lower levels of accuracy on this task in contrast to what was expected. One explanation furthered for this result was that those with higher AQ-10 scores may have had more difficulties maintaining the overall stimulus context in memory. Such work adds greatly to knowledge of the nature of the individual differences that can affect performance on this particular task.

Recent theories propose that semantic representation and sensorimotor processing have a common substrate via simulation. We tested the prediction that comprehension interacts with perception, using a standard psychophysics methodology. While passively listening to verbs that referred to upward or downward motion, and to control verbs that did not refer to motion, 20 subjects performed a motion-detection task, indicating whether or not they saw motion in visual stimuli containing threshold levels of coherent vertical motion. A signal detection analysis revealed that when verbs were directionally incongruent with the motion signal, perceptual sensitivity was impaired. Word comprehension also affected decision criteria and reaction times, but in different ways. The results are discussed with reference to existing explanations of embodied processing and the potential of psychophysical methods for assessing interactions between language and perception.