Increased Sensitivity to Mirror Symmetry in Autism

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Perreault, A., Gurnsey, R., Dawson, M., Mottron, L., & Bertone, A. (2011). Increased Sensitivity to Mirror Symmetry in Autism. PLoS ONE, 6(4), e19519. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0019519

Publication date: 29 Apr 2011 Added to AutiHub: 3 Jul 2026 Type: Article Article language: English
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Authors

Publication authors
5
Publication authors identified as autistic
1 / 5 (20.0%)
  1. Audrey Perreault
  2. Rick Gurnsey
  3. Michelle Dawson *
  4. Laurent Mottron
  5. Armando Bertone

Abstract

Can autistic people see the forest for the trees? Ongoing uncertainty about the integrity and role of global processing in autism gives special importance to the question of how autistic individuals group local stimulus attributes into meaningful spatial patterns. We investigated visual grouping in autism by measuring sensitivity to mirror symmetry, a highly-salient perceptual image attribute preceding object recognition. Autistic and non-autistic individuals were asked to detect mirror symmetry oriented along vertical, oblique, and horizontal axes. Both groups performed best when the axis was vertical, but across all randomly-presented axis orientations, autistics were significantly more sensitive to symmetry than non-autistics. We suggest that under some circumstances, autistic individuals can take advantage of parallel access to local and global information. In other words, autistics may sometimes see the forest and the trees, and may therefore extract from noisy environments genuine regularities which elude non-autistic observers.

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Cited references
33
Total cited references integrated for this publication.
Cited references with an identified autistic author
4 / 33 (12.1%)
Cited author occurrences identified as autistic
4 / 124 (3.2%)
Among occurrences linked to AutiHub author records: 4 / 45 (8.9%). Distinct cited authors identified as autistic: 1 / 104 (1.0%).
Cited author occurrences linked to AutiHub author records
45 / 124 (36.3%)
Distinct linked cited authors: 30 / 104 (28.8%)
Linked cited-author occurrences not identified as autistic
41 / 45 (91.1%)
Among linked cited-author occurrences only. Across all cited-author occurrences: 41 / 124 (33.1%). Distinct linked cited authors not identified as autistic: 29 / 30 (96.7%).
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