Autistic and non-autistic adults similarly experience statistical regularities

Abstract

Bayesian accounts of autism propose that perception is less influenced by prior expectations and more strongly driven by incoming sensory information in autistic than non-autistic individuals, with this altered balance cascading through the cognitive hierarchy to also influence higher cognitive functions. However, empirical support for these accounts remains mixed. Previous work has mostly tested these ideas in the context of objective environmental statistics, but recent work suggests that it may be subjective experience of structure, rather than structure itself, that shapes perceptual processing. Characterising these subjective experiences in autistic individuals is therefore crucial for understanding predictive processing in autism. In the present study, we thus examined subjective experience of statistical structure in autistic and non-autistic adults and tested how this experience relates to perceptual decisions. Participants were exposed to statistical regularities between action cues and visual stimuli (shapes), and we measured their speed and accuracy in reporting which shape they had seen. At the end of the study, participants were asked to estimate the probability and rate their surprise for each action-shape combination. Autistic and non-autistic participants showed similar subjective probability and surprise ratings and a comparable relationship between these ratings and perceptual decisions. Across participants, subjective ratings explained perceptual decisions better than objective structure. Together, these findings show that autistic and non-autistic adults experience statistical structure similarly, with these experiences exerting a similar influence on perceptual decisions - therefore suggesting that subjective experience plays a comparable role in predictive processing in autistic and non-autistic adults. Lay summaryOur brains constantly learn patterns from past experience - for example, that dark clouds are often followed by rain - and use this knowledge to predict and interpret what we see. We studied how autistic and non-autistic adults experience these learned patterns by asking them how likely and surprising they found different events. We found that both groups gave similar ratings, and that these experiences shaped perception in similar ways.