Perception of biological motion in autism

An ESRC funded research project has been investigating the perception of biological motion (point-light displays depicting human motion) in autism. The main findings were that children with autism were impaired in the perception of biological motion and sensitivity did not seem to improve with development. Moreover, this could not be explained by a perceptual impairment on other motion tasks as there were subgroups of children with performance in the normal range on these, but not on biological motion tasks. When we showed children with autism biological motion stimuli of a person pointing they did not use this to orient their attention in the direction of the perceived point as typically developing children did. And finally, when presented with two point light displays side by side, eye-tracking data revealed that young children with autism looked more at a point light spinning top (object motion) than at a point light walker (biological motion), the opposite pattern being true for typically developing children.