Increased Sensitivity to Mirror Symmetry in Autism

This publication is included in the Autistic Autism Scholarship Project. one author of this publication is identified as autistic in the project.

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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

Journal or book title
PLoS ONE
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Volume
6
Issue
4
Pages
e19519
Editors
David C. Burr
Publication date: 29 Apr 2011 Added to AutiHub: 3 Jul 2026 Type: Article Article language: English
Publisher source (DOI) Full text OpenAlex source

This publication is integrated into AutiHub through:

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.

Bibliography cited by this reference

Cited references are imported from external metadata sources when they are available. The list may be partial.

Cited bibliography overview

These indicators describe the bibliography cited by this publication. An author name is counted each time it appears in one cited reference, so the same person can be counted more than once. Names not yet linked to an author already present in AutiHub are treated as unknown, not as non-autistic. Last computed: 3 Oct 2026 01:00.

Cited references
33
With a DOI
32
Without a DOI, from raw bibliography text
1
4 / 33 (12.1%) cited references include at least one author identified as autistic.
References with data to complete
1 / 33 (3.0%)
References with detected author names
32 / 33 (97.0%)
Without detected author names
1
Without a structured title
0
Without a stable identifier
1
References with raw author names still to review
0
References with external metadata lookup issues
0
These indicators apply to cited references displayed on this page, after technical duplicates have been merged. A reference without a DOI can still support author statistics when a title and author names are available.
Author names detected in the cited bibliography
124
From DOI or external metadata
124
From validated raw bibliography text
0
Raw names already validated
0
Raw names still to review
0
48 / 124 (38.7%) names are linked to an author already present in AutiHub. 76 / 124 (61.3%) names are not yet linked.
Names linked to a person identified as autistic
4 / 124 (3.2%)
Calculated across all author names detected in the cited bibliography. Among names linked to an author already present in AutiHub: 4 / 48 (8.3%). Distinct people identified as autistic: 1 / 103 (1.0%).
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