Abnormal Processing Of Multiple Spatial Frames Of Reference Conflicts In Adults With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Spatial cognitive ability has an important impact on human behavior and life.By relying on the use of frames of reference(FOR),human can smoothly update and represent the space environment,thus determining the relationship between self and situation.There are three kinds of frames of reference,which are egocentric FOR(EFOR),intrinsic FOR(IFOR),and allocentric FOR(AFOR).In a more complex ecological context,it is of practical significance to study how people represent and deal with multiple frames of reference conflicts,such as EFOR-IFOR,IFOR-IFOR.Social cognitive impairment is one of the major symptoms in Autistic spectrum disorder(ASD),which has widespread neurodevelopmental disorders.Studies have found a close relationship between spatial cognitive ability and social skills,such as visual opinion picking ability(Firth,2007).At present,the research on the impairment of secondary visual perspective selection in autistic adults is still limited,and it is unclear whether there are differences in the processing and processing of multiple FORs conflicts between autistic adults and normally developing adults.Therefore,this study aims to enhance the ecology of task materials and investigate the processing mechanism of multiple spatial frame of reference conflict from the perspective of autism group and typical developmentl group.This study consisted of three behavioral experiments based on a simplified two-cannon paradigm,in which subjects were tasked with determining whether the target point was to the left or right of the cannon/little man by using keys on a keyboard.EFOR-IFOR conflict is induced by the reaction rule and the target point position,and IFOR-IFOR conflict is induced by the Angle relationship between cannons.Experiment 1 aims to repeat the classical two-cannon paradigm and test the stability of the paradigm.In experiment 2,cannons were replaced with figures to explore the behavior model of the multiple FORs conflicts processing mechanism in the ecological situation.Based on the ecological materials of Experiment 2,Experiment 3 extended the research results on the parallel processing mechanism of multiple FORs conflicts to the application of autism groups.The experimental results are shown below:(1)Experiment 1 observed the interaction between EFOR-IFOR and IFOR-IFOR.It is shown that the conflict of EFOR-IFOR behaves differently at different levels of IFOR-IFOR,which verifies the stability of the normal form.(2)In experiment 2,a triple interaction of positive and negative figures,EFOR-IFOR and IFOR-IFOR appears.Further analysis reveals an interaction between the positive and negative figures and EFOR-IFOR.It shows that the performance of EFOR-IFOR conflict between the front figures and the back figures is different at different levels of IFOR-IFOR conflict.(3)In experiment 3,between-group main effect was significant.Meanwhile,between-group interaction with EFOR-IFOR and IFOR-IFOR respectively.The autism group showed significantly slower reaction times than normal group,also performed worse than normal group in dealing with EFOR-IFOR and IFOR-IFOR conflict.The main conclusion is that:(1)In the case of positive and negative figures,there are differences in the conflict processing modes of attention allocation in the early stage and response selection in the late stage.It is shown that the enhancement of ecology will affect the operation mode of the multiple FORs conflicts processing mechanism in different situations,and the mental rotation strategy plays an enhanced role.(2)There are differences between adults with autism and those with normal neurodevelopment in the processing behavior patterns of the multiple FORs,which further indicates that adults with autism are impaired in the development of secondary visual perspective selection ability,and provides a new perspective and empirical evidence of spatial cognition for the social skill disorder of adults with autism.