Motion perception is crucial for visual behavior guiding, but it is known to be constrained by both motion pooling (global integration of local motion signals across space) and internal additive noise (i.e., a steady level of random fluctuations in brain activity irrespective of the stimulus).
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) sufferers have impairments in motion processing, which have been connected to both increased noise and improper pooling. However, no study has examined the effects of a third limit on how they perceive motion, known as generated internal noise (internal noise that scales up with increases in external sensory noise). For a study, researchers sought to provide an expansion on the double-pass paradigm to measure additive noise and induced noise in a motion paradigm. They also provided a novel approach for experimental motion pooling estimation. They evaluated how generated noise, which they attribute to changes in factors relevant to decision-making, affected direction discrimination.
Only on coarse, not fine motion direction discrimination tasks do the findings point to increased internal noise in those with strong ASD characteristics. They did not, however, find any evidence of a connection between autism features and motion pooling, generated noise, or additive noise in either task.
They came to a conclusion that, in some situations, people with strong ASD features may have greater levels of internal noise, and that measuring induced internal noise is a valuable technique to examine decision-related restrictions on motion perception, regardless of ASD symptoms.
Reference: jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2783668
