Weak Central Coherence in Adults With ASD: Evidence From Eye-Tracking And Thematic Content Analysis Of Social Scenes

Central coherence theory proposes that a specific perceptual-cognitive process that limits the ability to derive overall meaning from details underlies the central disturbance in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In a social context, it may interfere with the ability of individuals with ASD to understand interactions between people by recognizing emotional clues or attributing a particular mental state, and to play a role in the social difficulties associated with ASD. A sample of 28 adults diagnosed with ASD Level 1 and 25 controls were submitted to a cartoon-like task with the instruction to describe social scenes and a Navon letter task. Both quantitative measures and qualitative (thematic content analysis) procedures were used to assess performance. Heatmap and fixation preferences according to the stimuli quadrants were used to investigate eye-tracking patterns. A tendency to local processing, independently of the stimuli type, in the ASD participants was seen. In social scenes, quadrants with components such as characters' faces were neglected, resulting in a loss of implicit content related to interactions, as evidenced by verbal reports. A significantly longer reaction times and response durations in ASD. The findings corroborate the idea that weak central coherence may be part of the cognitive phenotype in ASD.