Atypical metacognition has been suggested to underlie autistic phenotypes, given its role in social cognition and behavioral flexibility. However, no study has quantitatively assessed metacognitive abilities in autism. Here, we measured meta-uncertainty-the noise corrupting estimates of one's own decision uncertainty-in autism. In three experiments, autistic and non-autistic participants (N = 145) performed orientation categorization tasks while simultaneously reporting their choice confidence. By independently manipulating each Bayesian component-sensory uncertainty, prior, and reward-and fitting a recently established process model, we assessed metacognitive abilities and their contingency on the Bayesian components while controlling for first-order decisions. Unlike non-autistic participants, autistic participants' meta-uncertainty depended on which decision component was manipulated and was lower than that of non-autistic participants, specifically when decisions were adjusted for sensory uncertainty. These findings reveal that metacognition in autism is not generally reduced but rather enhanced for inferences that rely primarily on sensory information.

According to prevalent views, autistic individuals have a stronger tendency to allocate attention to details, as supported by reports of enhanced visual search performance. However, both the dynamics and the types of information involved in attentional guidance in autism are not fully understood. We addressed this issue by testing the influence of search history on visual search performance and pupil size in a long search display (Experiment 1) and on accuracy in a brief and masked-more attentionally demanding-search display (Experiment 2). Autistic (N = 48) and non-autistic (N = 45) participants searched for a color singleton target (all equiluminant colors) and responded by identifying its shape. In each trial, the target and distractor colors could be repeated, switched, or novel with respect to the previous trial. In Experiment 1, while overall reaction time was comparable across groups, the task-evoked pupillary responses (TEPRs) were smaller in the autistic group, indicating reduced attentional effort in autism. In Experiment 2, in a more attentionally demanding display, autistic individuals showed superior search accuracy. In both experiments, both groups showed a reliable effect of recent search history on performance, indicating that, similar to non-autistic individuals, autistic individuals rely on recent experience during attentional allocation. Alterations in attentional allocation and its interaction with recent experience in autism were reflected in pupil responses. These alterations may provide a sensitive marker of differences in the dynamics of attentional allocation in autism, which are reflected in behavioral measurements when display conditions are more attentionally demanding.

Atypical metacognition has been suggested to underlie autistic phenotypes, given its role in social cognition and behavioural flexibility. However, no study has quantitatively assessed metacognitive abilities in autism. Here, we measured meta-uncertainty—the noise corrupting the estimates of one’s own decision uncertainty—in autism. In three experiments, autistic and non-autistic participants (N = 145) performed orientation categorisation tasks while simultaneously reporting their choice confidence. By independently manipulating each Bayesian component—sensory uncertainty, prior, and reward—and fitting a recently established process model, we assessed metacognitive abilities and their contingency on the Bayesian components while controlling for first-order decisions. Unlike non-autistic participants, autistic participants’ meta-uncertainty depended on which decision component was manipulated, and was lower than that of non-autistic participants specifically when decisions were adjusted for sensory uncertainty. These findings reveal that metacognition in autism is not generally reduced but rather enhanced for inferences that rely primarily on sensory information.

Introduction:The Community Assessment of Psychic Experiences (CAPE-42) is a reliable tool to assess psychotic experiences (PEs) in clinical and non-clinical populations, in research and clinical settings. Methods:To investigate cultural differences in PEs and control for pathological behavior in non-clinical groups, we developed a Hebrew version of the CAPE-42 using the translation/back-translation method. A total of 359 Hebrew speaking Israelis participated in an online study comprising the CAPE-42, the Autistic Quotient (AQ), the Center for Epidemiological Study - Depression Scale (CES-D), and the Prodromal Questionnaire - Brief Version (PQ-B). We examined the psychometric properties of the Hebrew CAPE-42-including its factor structure, internal consistency, gender invariance, and validity. We also investigated the independent and interaction effects of psychotic and autistic traits on depressive symptoms. Results:Reliability analysis demonstrated very good internal consistency, and confirmatory factor analysis supported the eight-factor model, which included depressive, social withdrawal, affective flattening, avolition, bizarre experiences, perceptual abnormalities, persecutory ideation, and magical thinking. Demonstrating its predictive and convergent validity, we found significant correlations with the CES-D and the PQ-B. The predictive model showed that both psychotic and autistic traits are independent, non-interacting, predictors of depressive symptoms. Conclusions:The Hebrew CAPE-42 offers a valuable instrument for investigating PEs in the Hebrew-speaking population and facilitates cross-cultural studies.

Background: Alterations in sensory perception, a core phenotype of autism, are attributed to imbalanced integration of sensory information and prior knowledge during perceptual statistical (Bayesian) inference. This hypothesis has gained momentum in recent years, partly because it can be implemented both at the computational level, as in Bayesian perception, and at the level of canonical neural microcircuitry, as in predictive coding. However, empirical investigations have yielded conflicting results with evidence remaining limited. Critically, previous studies did not assess the independent contributions of priors and sensory uncertainty to the inference. Method: We addressed this gap by quantitatively assessing both the independent and interdependent contributions of priors and sensory uncertainty to perceptual decision-making in autistic and non-autistic individuals (N=126) during an orientation categorization task. Results: Contrary to common views, autistic individuals integrated the two Bayesian components into their decision behavior, and did so indistinguishably from non-autistic individuals. Both groups adjusted their decision criteria in a suboptimal manner. Limitations: This study focuses on explicit priors in a perceptual categorization task and high-functioning adults. Thus, although the findings provide strong evidence against a general and basic alteration in prior integration in autism, they cannot rule out more specific cases of reduced prior effect – such as due to implicit prior learning, particular level of decision making (e.g., social), and level of functioning of the autistic person. Conclusions: These results reveal intact inference for autistic individuals during perceptual decision-making, challenging the notion that Bayesian computations are fundamentally altered in autism.

Individuating a single item presented within a continuous sequence of items requires segregating its signal from that of the other items. In contrast, representing a global aspect of the sequence, such as its average orientation, involves integration of information across time. Individuation and integration allow us to focus on individual events while maintaining an overall perception of our environment. To examine the relations between temporal averaging and individuation, we measured orientation averaging over short and long timescales using the same stimuli and orientation-estimation procedure previously used to measure individuation. Participants reported the average orientation of a sequence of three oriented items separated by either short (SOAs<150 ms) or long intervals (SOAs>150 ms). Analysis of the error distribution and mixture-modeling revealed distinct patterns of results for the different tasks and timescales, but also some similarities, particularly for the short timescale. In this timescale, the relative contribution of each individual item to the final response was similar across tasks, indicating the involvement of low-level factors operating regardless of the task. With the long timescale, the two tasks showed dissociable pattern across all performance aspects, except guessing rate, indicating that long-scale individuation and averaging engage mainly higher-level, task-related processes. Importantly, regardless of timescale, estimation errors in these tasks were best described by different models: in integration they primarily reflected unequal weighting of the averaged items, whereas in individuation they reflected imprecise target encoding with occasional misreports of distractors. Together, the findings reveal dissociable dynamics for integration and individuation.

Alterations in reward processing were proposed as a contributing factor to social and communication symptoms in autism. However, the nature of these alterations remains unclear, and it is debated whether reduced sensitivity to reward is a general phenomenon, specific to social contexts, or exists at all. Evidence for reduced sensitivity to reward primarily comes from neurobiological studies, yet it remains uncertain how these findings translate to autistic behavior. A key challenge in addressing this question lies in assessing and comparing behavioral responses to reward between autistic and non-autistic groups. Here, we addressed this issue by investigating the integration of monetary reward information into behavior through the framework of Bayesian perceptual decision-making, enabling a quantitative evaluation of the direct contribution of reward to decision-making. Autistic (n = 32) and non-autistic (n = 48) participants performed an orientation categorization task, while the monetary reward given per correct answer varied across categories. Using signal-detection theory, we estimated decision boundaries while accounting for sensory uncertainty and prior expectation. Our results reveal that autistic individuals adjust their decision boundaries in response to monetary reward in a suboptimal but typical manner. These findings challenge the hypothesis of generalized alteration of reward processing in autism.

Crowding, our inability to identify a feature or object – the target – due to its proximity to adjacent features or objects – flankers – exhibits a notable inner-outer asymmetry. This asymmetry is characterized by the outer flanker – more peripheral – creating stronger interference than the inner one – closer to the fovea. But crowding is not uniform across different feature dimensions. For example, in the case of orientation, this asymmetry reflects misreport errors: observers are more likely to misidentify the outer flanker as the target than the inner one. However, for spatial frequency (SF), observers tend to average the features of the target and flankers (Yashar et al., 2019). Here, we investigated whether and how the inner-outer asymmetry manifests across various feature dimensions: Gabor orientation and SF, as well as T-shape tilt and color. We reanalyzed continuous estimation reports data published by Yashar et al. (2019), focusing on a previously unanalyzed factor: the relative position of each flanker (inner vs. outer). We fit probabilistic models that assign variable weights to each flanker. Our analysis revealed that observers predominantly misreport the outer flanker as the target with Gabor orientation and T-shape tilt stimuli, and slightly so with color stimuli, whereas with Gabor SF, observers perform a weighted average of all features but also with a bias towards the outer flanker over the inner one. These findings suggest that an increased weighting on the more peripheral items is a general characteristic of crowding in peripheral vision.

INTRODUCTION: A person's light sensitivity varies depending on lighting conditions and the state of their sensory system. Yet, current image enhancement algorithms do not consider individual differences, instead offering a "one size fits all". For example, histogram equalization improves the visibility of nighttime images by modifying the luminance histogram to the full scale between black and white. Here, we developed a new algorithm that enhances images according to individual preferences and demonstrate its efficacy in an experiment. METHODS: Phase 1 - image adjustment: for each image (5 in daylight and 13 in nighttime), participants (n=12) moved the mouse in the x and y directions to simultaneously adjust two parameters, the mean and variance of a gaussian function that determined the luminance and contrast of the image. Images were adjusted twice-when presented alone or presented near the histogram equalized image. Phase 2 – discrimination: we tested whether the selected parameters in phase 1 improved the visibility of the adjusted image. Each adjusted image was compared to the original image or to the histogram equalized image, and the participant selected the image that appeared to have more details. RESULTS: Phase 1: Image parameters varied across image type and participants. Importantly there was a high correlation between the first and second image adjustment both across images and participants. These finding suggests individual difference in image enhancement preferences. Phase 2: With daylight images, participants choices did not differ from chance, that is they chose adjusted or comparison images randomly. However, when nighttime images were presented, participants preferred the adjusted images significantly more than the original and the histogram equalized images (88% and 74%, respectively). Our study quantifies variation in image enhancement preferences across neurotypical individuals, demonstrates the efficacy of our method, and that individual differences should be considered in future applications of image processing.

Peripheral letter recognition is fundamentally limited not by the visibility of letters but by the spacing between them, i.e., 'crowding'. Crowding imposes a significant constraint on reading, however, the interplay between crowding and reading is not fully understood. Using a letter recognition task in varying display conditions, we investigated the effects of lexicality (words versus pseudowords), visual hemifield, and transitional letter probability (bigram/trigram frequency) among skilled readers (N = 14. and N = 13) in Hebrew - a script read from right to left. We observed two language-universal effects: a lexicality effect and a right hemifield (left hemisphere) advantage, as well as a strong language-specific effect - a left bigram advantage stemming from the right-to-left reading direction of Hebrew. The latter finding suggests that transitional probabilities are essential for parafoveal letter recognition. The results reveal that script-specific contextual information such as letter combination probabilities is used to accurately identify crowded letters.

Crowding refers to the inability to recognize objects in clutter, setting a fundamental limit on various perceptual tasks such as reading and facial recognition. While prevailing models suggest that crowding is a unitary phenomenon occurring at an early level of processing, recent studies have shown that crowding might also occur at higher levels of representation. Here we investigated whether local and global crowding interference co-occurs within the same display. To do so, we tested the distinctive contribution of local flanker features and global configurations of the flankers on the pattern of crowding errors. Observers (n = 27) estimated the orientation of a target when presented alone or surrounded by flankers. Flankers were grouped into a global configuration, forming an illusory rectangle when aligned or a rectangular configuration when misaligned. We analyzed the error distributions by fitting probabilistic mixture models. Results showed that participants often misreported the orientation of a flanker instead of that of the target. Interestingly, in some trials the orientation of the global configuration was misreported. These results suggest that crowding occurs simultaneously across multiple levels of visual processing and crucially depends on the spatial configuration of the stimulus. Our results pose a challenge to models of crowding with an early single pooling stage and might be better explained by models which incorporate the possibility of multilevel crowding and account for complex target-flanker interactions.

Crowding refers to the failure to identify a peripheral object due to its proximity to other objects (flankers). This phenomenon can lead to reading and object recognition impairments and is associated with macular degeneration, amblyopia, and dyslexia. Crucially, the maximal target-flanker spacing required for the crowding interference (critical spacing) increases with eccentricity. This spacing is also larger when target and flankers appear along the horizontal meridian (radial arrangement) than when the flankers appear above and below the target (tangential arrangement). This phenomenon is known as radial-tangential anisotropy. Previous studies have demonstrated that transient attention can reduce crowding interference; however, it is still unclear whether and how attention interacts with radial-tangential anisotropy. To address this issue, we manipulated transient attention by using a cue at either the target (valid) or the fixation (neutral) location, in both radial and tangential target-flanker arrangements. Results showed that critical spacing was larger in the radial than in the tangential arrangement and that cueing the target location improved performance and reduced the critical spacing for both radial and tangential arrangements to the same extent. Together, our findings suggest that transient spatial attention plays an essential role in crowding but not in radial-tangential anisotropy.

Background. Compared to typically developed perception, ASD perception relies more on bottom-up, sensory input. In a Bayesian framework, perceptual decisions depend on three information sources: expectation (prior), sensory evidence (likelihood), and reward (cost function). There is a growing debate about whether atypical perception in ASD is due to changes in prior information or changes in likelihood. Inconsistent results may be due to variations in tasks and sampled populations. Importantly, decisions also involve decision rules (criteria) that may incorporate any of these information sources. Nevertheless, it is unknown whether ASD individuals appropriately set their choice criteria. Moreover, it is unknown whether ASD decision processes in basic perception are mirrored in metacognition. Here, we address these issues with a systematic investigation that tests the effects of prior belief and likelihood on decision criteria in perceptual and metacognitive judgments. Method. Observers performed an orientation categorization task by simultaneously reporting orientation category and confidence. Stimulus orientation was drawn from 2 gaussian distributions with means μA = -4 ̊ and μB = 4 ̊, and standard deviations 𝜎A = 𝜎B = 5 ̊, which induced an overlap between the two distributions. We manipulated prior by varying the base-rate probability of each category and likelihood by varying stimulus contrast. Results. Both groups shifted decision criteria to favor the category with the higher base rate. Furthermore, people with ASD, like controls, shifted their decision criteria to favor the more probable category more when stimulus contrast was low. Finally, the ASD group showed typical abilities in metacognitively assessing their performances. Conclusion. Contrary to recent views, individuals with ASD integrate prior expectation with sensory evidence similarly to typically developed individuals. Both groups integrate prior with likelihood in a manner consistent with the Bayesian theory. In the context of a visual task, the metacognitive abilities also appear to be preserved.

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder of unknown etiology. Recently, there has been a growing interest in sensory processing in autism as a core phenotype. However, basic questions remain unanswered. Here, we review the major findings and models of perception in autism and point to methodological issues that have led to conflicting results. We show that popular models of perception in autism, such as the reduced prior hypothesis, cannot explain themany and varied findings. To resolve these issues, we point to the benefits of using rigorous psychophysical methods to study perception in autism. We advocate for perceptual models that provide a detailed explanation of behavior while also taking into account factors such as context, learning, and attention. Furthermore, we demonstrate the importance of tracking changes over the course of development to reveal the causal pathways and compensatory mechanisms. We finally propose a developmental perceptual narrowing account of the condition.

Crowding refers to the failure to identify a peripheral object due to nearby objects (flankers). A hallmark of crowding is inner-outer asymmetry; that is, the outer flanker (more peripheral) produces stronger interference than the inner one. Here, by manipulating attention, we tested the predictions of two competing accounts: the attentional account, which predicts a positive attentional effect on the inner-outer asymmetry (i.e., attention to the outer flanker will increase asymmetry) and the receptive field size account, which predicts a negative attentional effect. In Experiment 1, observers estimated a Gabor target orientation. A peripheral pre-cue drew attention to one of three locations: target, inner flanker, or outer flanker. Probabilistic mixture modeling demonstrated asymmetry by showing that observers often misreported the outer-flanker orientation as the target. Interestingly, the outer cue led to a higher misreport rate of the outer flanker, and the inner cue led to a lower misreport rate of the outer flanker. Experiment 2 tested the effect of crowding and attention on incoherent object reports (i.e., binding errors, reporting the tilt of one presented item with the color of another item). In each trial, observers estimated both the tilt and color of the target. Attention merely increased coherent target reports, but not coherent flanker reports. The results suggest that the locus of spatial attention plays an essential role in crowding, as well as inner-outer asymmetry, and demonstrate that crowding and feature binding are closely related. However, our findings are inconsistent with the view that covert attention automatically binds features together.

Crowding refers to the inability to recognize objects in clutter, setting a fundamental limit on object recognition. Here, we investigated the processing level at which crowding occurs by exploring the type of crowding errors (global, local, or both). Twenty-seven observers estimated the orientation of a target when presented alone or surrounded by flankers (local shapes). Flankers were aligned to create an illusory rectangle (enhanced global configuration) or misaligned (reduced global configuration). We analyzed the error distributions by fitting probabilistic mixture models. Results showed that often participants misreported the orientation of a flanker instead of that of the target. Interestingly, in some trials the orientation of the global configuration was misreported. These results suggest that crowding occurs simultaneously across multiple levels of visual processing and crucially depends on the spatial configuration of the stimulus. Thus, crowding might be characterized as a bottleneck of visual object identification at different levels of representation.

Background: Crowding refers to the failure to identify a peripheral object because other objects (flankers) surround it. A hallmark characteristic of crowding is the inner-outer asymmetry, i.e., the unintuitive fact that the outer flanker produces more substantial interference than the inner one. Despite recent efforts to explain this characteristic of crowding, the processes that underlie the inner-outer asymmetry are still unclear. Here, we investigated the role of attention in visual crowding by investigating whether and how spatial transient attention interacts with its flankers' asymmetrical effect. Method. Eighteen observers estimated the orientation of a Gabor target presented at 7° eccentricity. The crowding display consisted of two flankers along the horizontal meridian, one on each side of the target. We manipulated attention by using a pre-cue that could appear at one of four possible locations: fixation, target, inner-flanker, or outer flanker. We assessed each flanker's contribution to the pattern of errors by fitting probabilistic mixture-models. Results. Consistent with our previous findings, observers often misreported the outer (eccentric) flanker as the target (reflecting the inner-outer asymmetry). Interestingly, directing transient attention to the inner flanker location reduced crowding interference by decreasing the outer flanker reports. However, directing attention to the outer flanker location increased the crowding interference by increasing the outer flanker reports. Conclusions. The present results are inconsistent with some of the current crowding models (e.g., the cortical magnification and the receptive size views). Our findings suggest that spatial attention plays an essential role in the inner-outer asymmetry, a hallmark characteristic of crowding.

Crowding, the failure to identify a peripheral item in clutter, is an essential bottleneck in visual information processing. A hallmark characteristic of crowding is the inner–outer asymmetry in which the outer flanker (more eccentric) produces stronger interference than the inner one (closer to the fovea). We tested the contribution of the inner-outer asymmetry to the pattern of crowding errors in a typical radial crowding display in which both flankers are presented simultaneously on the horizontal meridian. In two experiments, observers were asked to estimate the orientation of a Gabor target. Instead of the target, observers reported the outer flanker much more frequently than the inner one. When the target was the outer Gabor, crowding was reduced. Furthermore, when there were four flankers, two on each side of the target, observers misreported the outer flanker adjacent to the target, not the outermost flanker. Model comparisons suggested that orientation crowding reflects sampling over a weighted sum of the represented features, in which the outer flanker is more heavily weighted compared to the inner one. Our findings reveal a counterintuitive phenomenon: in a radial arrangement of orientation crowding, within a region of selection, the outer item dominates appearance more than the inner one.