J Autism Dev Disord (2010) 40:3953 DOI 10.

1007/s10803-009-0824-2

ORIGINAL PAPER

Unimpaired Perception of Social and Physical Causality, but Impaired Perception of Animacy in High Functioning Children with Autism
Sara Congiu Anne Schlottmann Elizabeth Ray

Published online: 28 July 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009

Abstract We investigated perception of social and physical causality and animacy in simple motion events, for high-functioning children with autism (CA = 13, VMA = 9.6). Children matched 14 different animations to pictures showing physical, social or non-causality. In contrast to previous work, children with autism performed at a high level similar to VMA-matched controls, recognizing physical causality in launch and social causality in reaction events. The launch decit previously found in younger children with autism, possibly related to attentional/verbal difculties, is apparently overcome with age. Some events involved squares moving non-rigidly, like animals. Children with autism had difculties recognizing this, extending the biological motion literature. However, animacy prompts amplied their attributions of social causality. Thus children with autism may overcome their animacy perception decit strategically. Keywords High-functioning autism Perceptual causality Perceptual animacy

Introduction Perceptual causality and animacy refer to perceptual illusions in 2-dimensional displays devoid of real causality or animate agents, illusions that can be related to the social decits and perceptual peculiarities of autism. Here, we assess these illusions in high functioning children with autism, to help illuminate basic processes of (social) perception involved in the disorder. Perceptual causality occurs in schematic events like launching and reaction (Fig. 1) involving two geometrical shapes (e.g., Schlottmann et al. 2006; Michotte 1946/1963; Kanizsa and Vicario 1968). The events can be seen to represent proto-typical physical and social interactions, i.e., elastic collisions with transfer of momentum and chase/ escape sequences with contingent motion-at-a-distance. Although the animations are ambiguous (e.g., the shapes can be perceived as 2-dimensional or a projection of 3-dimensional objects from the side or top/bottom) and involve a reduced number of features (e.g., absence of sound), they nevertheless give rise to convincing impressions of causality, with adults usually describing the launch event as A pushes B or A hits B and sets it in motion and the reaction event as A chases B or B escapes from Awith B reacting intentionally to A. These impressions are, however, linked to the spatial and temporal event conguration, with the introduction of even a brief pause between A and Bs motion disrupting the causal illusion. Perceptual causality (PC) emerges early in development and might support causal learning and social motivation: Children from age 3 (Schlottmann et al. 2002) and infants as young as 6 months show sensitivity to the causal roles of the agents in habituation paradigms (Leslie and Keeble 1987; Schlottmann and Surian 1999; Schlottmann et al. 2009; Oakes and Cohen 1994; Cohen and Amsel 1998).

S. Congiu Dipartimento di Filosoa e Scienze Sociali, University of Siena, Siena, Italy A. Schlottmann (&) E. Ray Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK e-mail: a.schlottmann@ucl.ac.uk S. Congiu (&) Dipartimento di Scienze della Cognizione e della Formazione, University of Trento, Corso Bettini 31, 38068 Rovereto, TN, Italy e-mail: sara.congiu@unitn.it

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Fig. 1 a Launch event: The launch event (Michotte 1946/1963) involves two squares, A on the left and B in the middle of the screen. A starts moving towards B (from left to right) suddenly stopping upon contact while at the same time B starts moving following the same direction and then stopping. The version of the launch event (and subsequent events) used here lasted 8 s, with the duration of each

motion phase indicated in the gure. b Reaction event: In the reaction event (Kanizsa and Vicario 1968) A moves towards B (like in the launch), but B starts moving before A reaches it, so that A and B move simultaneously in the same direction, then A stops while B continues to move for a while

Thus, PC could help infants identify causal events without need for previous knowledge or experience, with perception of contact causality promoting learning about mechanical interactions of material bodies (Leslie 1988, 1995; Schlottmann 1999) while perception of non-contact causality could promote learning about the social interactions of intentional agents (Schlottmann and Surian 1999). Impaired PC early in development, in contrast, could be related to later problems in these areas. Accordingly, we study PC in autism, using a sensitive method that may help overcome some shortcomings of previous work (Bowler and Thommen 2000; Ray and Schlottmann 2007). Social Decits in Autism and Perception of Causality at a Distance The social decits characterising autism suggest that perception of reaction causality could be impaired in this population. Research on very early behavioural symptoms of autism (Osterling et al. 2002; Chawarska and Volkmar 2005) has highlighted social impairments that precede even the earliest precursors of theory of mind (ToM) skills, suggesting that the lack of ToM (Baron Cohen et al. 1985) could be consequence rather than cause of basic social and perceptual disabilities (Klin et al. 1992). Poor sensitivity to naturally occurring social stimuli, lack of response to their own name (Osterling and Dawson 1994; Osterling et al. 2002), abnormal eye contact (Volkmar and Mayes 1990), lack of response to, as well as initiation of joint attention (Loveland and Landry 1986; Mundy et al. 1990; Mundy and Neal 2001), and lack of communicative intent (Tager-Flusberg et al. 2005) are symptoms of autism in toddlers younger than two (Carter et al. 2005). Two-year-olds with autism also show impaired or abnormal perception of biological human motion in point light displays (Klin et al. 2003; Klin and Jones 2008). Overall, research supports the idea that the developmental

trajectory of children with autism differs from early on, probably from birth, and that poor attention to social stimuli goes hand in hand with anomalies in social development. The limited salience of social stimuli and related lack of interest in the social environment then limits further possibilities for learning to manage social interactions. This may impact later outcome in addition to any biological factors involved (Rogers et al. 2005). Along these lines, problems with the perception of reaction causality might contribute to the reduced amount of social information available to children with autism early on, with negative consequences for later understanding of the behaviour of intentional agents. People with autism not only have a qualitative decit in everyday social interactions, but also in the verbal description of social elements in complex animated displays similar to those pioneered by Heider and Simmel (1944) in which geometrical shapes interact in various ways (Klin 2000; Bowler and Thommen 2000; Abell et al. 2000; Castelli et al. 2002). This is not related to age or verbal IQ (Klin 2000) and no difculty appears in the description of contact interactions (Bowler and Thommen 2000). Thus children with autism may have difculties in the perception of social events. It is still unclear, however, whether the difculty is perceptual, in which case it should appear even in much simpler animations, like reaction events, or whether it reects more general difculties with understanding social situations, needed to interpret complex animations. Two prior studies tested the perceptual view directly, looking at PC in simple causal animations (Bowler and Thommen 2000; Ray and Schlottmann 2007). Neither found a decit in reaction perception for children with autism relative to normal children. However, both studies may have lacked sensitivity: Bowler and Thommen (2000) studied verbal reports, and even typically developing children

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between 5 and 12 years often describe causal events in spatio-temporal rather than causal terms (Thommen et al. 1998). Ray and Schlottmanns (2007) less verbal picture matching method is sensitive to PC in normal children from 3 to 4 years (Schlottmann et al. 2002), but to test lowfunctioning children with autism they used 1- and 2-word utterance instructions, which led to a overall decrease in performance even in the normal controls. The reduced instruction may therefore have interfered with task understanding. The method of the present study is closer to that of Schlottmann et al. (2002), for a test that is more sensitive than previous work to any potential reaction decit in autism. Perceptual Decits in Autism and Perception of Contact Causality The non-social, perceptual and attentional decits characterising autism suggest that perception of launch causality, or both reaction and launch causality might be impaired. The good performance of people with autism on perceptual tasks requiring attention to local elements, like Wechsler block-design (Shah and Frith 1983) or the embedded gures test (Shah and Frith 1993; Joliffe and Baron-Cohen 1997), and difculties in tasks like face recognition on the basis of holistic processing (Langdell 1978), were originally interpreted as two sides of the same coin. The most inuential theory of non-social symptoms of autism, the Weak Central Coherence theory (WCC; Frith 1989; Happe 2005) was initially formulated to explain decits and assets in autism as originating from a difculty to integrate details into meaningful wholes. Subsequent experimental ndings conrmed enhanced processing abilities at the local level, but also showed that global processing occurs under some conditions (Mottron et al. 2006; Mottron and Burack 2001; Ozonoff et al. 1994; Plaisted et al. 1999; Plaisted 2001), as recognized in the and Frith most recent version of WCC theory (Happe 2006). Mottron and Buracks (2001) enhanced perceptual functioning model (EPF) similarly argues for superiority per se of low-level perceptual operations unrelated to processing of the global aspects of information, so that in autism, in contrast to what happens in typical individuals, higher-order control over cognition may not be mandatory (Mottron et al. 2006). Regardless of which model is adopted, a local processing bias in autism might predict a general PC decit: Perception of causality requires global processing and attention to the overall causal gestalt rather than the component motions. Bowler and Thommen (2000), found no decit, but this may reect their insensitive verbal task. Ray and Schlottmann (2007), on the other hand, found a PC decit, but only for launch perception.

The inconsistency can be resolved by considering how launch and reaction events differ. In particular, the crucial moment of contact between the shapes in the launch event is very brief, while the simultaneous motion of the shapes in the reaction event extends over an extended time frame of several hundred milliseconds. This difference in the temporal characteristics of the events might mean that launch events are more difcult to process for children with autism. Two accounts might be given of this difculty. First, central control processes might operate slowly in autism (Joliffe and Baron-Cohen 1997). For instance, a selective attention Navon task with extremely short stimuli produced a local advantage in autism (Mottron and Belleville 1993), when a global advantage appears with longer stimuli (Plaisted et al. 1999). Thus very brief stimuli might be insufcient to support global processing in autism. Alternatively, it might be difcult in launch events to shift attention rapidly from shape A to the interaction, so as to not miss the dening moment of contact. Individuals with autism are often slower at disengaging attention (Wainwright-Sharp and Bryson 1993; Allen and Courchesne 2001) and shifting attention between and within modalities (Courchesne et al. 1994; Townsend et al. 1996; Allen and Courchesne 2001). These attentional difculties would also predict that children with autism might have more difculties with launch than reaction events. For a test of these views, Ray and Schlottmann (2007) suggested an entraining event, in which shape A contacts B, and pushes it forward for a while. This is an example of physical causality involving a longer causal interaction (Michotte 1946/1963), which should eliminate a slow processing difculty in autism. In contrast, a cueing stimulus at the point of, but prior to contact, should help children shift attention. The present study takes up both suggestions. The Present Study In sum, the present study considered PC in autism using Ray and Schlottmanns (2007) picture choice method (see Fig. 2) to minimize memory and verbal demands and to avoid problems with verbal descriptions as in Thommen et al. (1998). However, the present instructions are similar to those used by Schlottmann et al. (2002) with typically developing children, rather than the rudimentary 1- and 2-word instructions developed by Ray and Schlottmann (2007), which may have reduced task understanding. Of course, our more articulated instructions required children with autism to function at a higher verbal level (9.6 VMA versus 5.1 in Ray and Schlottmann 2007), and this also meant that our sample has a higher chronological age (13.0 versus 8.4). This should not affect a launch decit

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Fig. 2 Choice pictures: A boy pushes a cart, corresponding to physical causality; a boy stands still while a girl walks away, corresponding to independent movement; a boy runs after a girl who

runs away, corresponding to social causality. None of the pictures represents contact in order to avoid simple contact matching responses

due to slow global processing, which persists into adulthood (Mottron and Belleville 1993). However, it might improve launch performance if the decit reects attentional problems, as these may decrease with age (Allen and Courchesne 2001). The test included the 8 launch, reaction and delayed control events used by Ray and Schlottmann (2007), plus 6 new events. An entraining event (Fig. 3a), with prolonged contact of the shapes, was added to test the slow-processing hypothesis. In a cued launch event to test the attentional shift hypothesis, shape B ashed on and off while A moved towards it (Fig. 3b). This might help individuals with autism cope with a possibly slower disengage/move component of attention (Wainwright-Sharp and Bryson 1993; Wainwright and Bryson 1996). Finally, we showed children an ambiguous event (Fig. 3c), with simultaneous motion at a distance, as in a reaction event, followed by contact, as in launching, to test for any preference for a physical or social interpretation.

Young children with typical development take this event to show physical causality (Watts et al. 2007). If children with autism have a launch perception decit they should not show this pattern. Events were shown with rigid motion and with a rhythmic, non-rigid motion (Fig. 4). This did not systematically affect causal attributions in Ray and Schlottmann (2007), but this non-effect might have been a casualty of the generally depressed performance in that study. Michottes (1963) caterpillar stimulus appears animate to adults and children (Schlottmann et al. 2002; Schlottmann et al. 2006; Schlottmann and Ray 2004) and children with autism have well-documented difculties with processing biological motion (e.g., Blake et al. 2003). Accordingly, it seemed important to re-consider the perception of this articial form of biological motion in a more sensitive paradigm. The relation between perception of animacy and causality is reconsidered in the discussion.

Fig. 3 a Entraining event: In entraining, shape A moves towards B and makes contact with it, as in launching, but upon contact the two shapes continue moving together (as if A pushes B) until A stops. The interaction between A and B lasts exactly as long as in the reaction event (about 680 ms). b Cued launch event: A approaches B, and after 1428 ms B ashes on and off for 425 ms, ceasing 187 ms prior to impact. The total duration of the approach phase thus is 1983 ms,

exactly as in the non-cued launch event. c Ambiguous event: This shows in effect a reaction followed by a launch. First A moves towards B, with B beginning to move prior to contact, as in the reaction event. However, A moves twice as fast as B and catches up with it. Upon contact with B, A stops, while B continues to move as in the launch event

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Fig. 4 Caterpillar stimulus (Michotte 1946/1963): A square expands towards the right, with the left edge stationary, then contracts, with the right edge stationary. The resultant translation appears animate

Method Participants Forty-one children participated in the study, 19 children with high-functioning autism and 22 children with typical development matched for verbal mental age. Children with autism were tested during their regular appointment at the Child Neuropsychiatry Unit of the Hospital in Siena (17) and in LAquila (2), children with typical development attended a primary school in Quartu S.E. (CA). Children with autism were diagnosed according to DSM-IV (APAssociation 1994) criteria by expert professionals as measured by the ADOS, module 3, rating of 79 (Lord et al. 1999). The ADOS and a cognitive evaluation with the WISC-R (Wechsler 1986; the version still used in Italy) were administered in separate sessions by hospital staff, or the IQ scores were already in the clinical records of the children. Chronological ages and psychometric data are in Table 1. Design The events included all 8 stimuli from Ray and Schlottmann (2007), i.e., launch and reaction events, and their delayed non-causal equivalents with and without contact, all with both rigid and non-rigid agents, in a 2 (presence/absence of contact) 9 2 (presence/absence of delay) 9 2 (rigid/nonrigid motion) factorial design. The 6 new events consisted of ambiguous reaction ? launch events and of entraining events with both rigid and non-rigid agents, as well as cued
Table 1 Participant characteristics Group Autism (n = 19) Mean Range SD Mean Range SD 13.0 8.218.7 2.9 9.5 8.109.10 0.3 9.6 5.815.9 3.0 Chronological age Verbal mental age

launch and reaction events (Fig. 3). The latter were shown only with rigid motion, since the ash cue seemed to interfere with perception of the non-rigid motion. The 14 animations were presented in two sets of 8 and 6 each, separated by a brief pause. The stimuli in the rst set involved rigidly moving shapes, while the second set had non-rigid motion. Events within each set were presented in a different random order for each child, except that the two cued events were always presented at the end of the set, (to avoid that the cue interfered with the task). As a measure of perceptual causality, for each event children chose which of three pictures in Fig. 2 corresponded best to each movie. As a measure of perceptual animacy we asked children to describe the non-rigid motion stimuli on initial encounter. Subsequently, we gave hints to consider an animate interpretation of the stimuli, to amplify any potential animacy effects on childrens subsequent causal attributions. Materials The stimuli were 2D animations realised with Macromedia Director Software (MX. 2004, Macromedia inc. S.Francisco California), integrated in a graphic interface and shown on a portable PC (Toshiba Satellite M-30 853) on a TFT 20 9 35 cm screen with a resolution of 1280 9 800 pixels. Each movie lasted 480 frames (2 pixel/frame at 60 f/s, about 8 s) and repeated continuously for the duration of a trial with a pause (1 s) at the end of each cycle during which the normally white screen turned gray. Each animation involved 2 squares, (60 9 60 pixels, 1.5 9 1.5 cm), initially stationary, blue on the left and red

Verbal IQ

Performance IQ

Full scale IQ

74.26 45111 21.79 124.77 97143 12.474

79.63 45120 23.97

75.21 40110 23.42

Typical Dev. (n = 22)

Note: Ages presented in years months format

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in the middle of the screen. The shapes always moved from left to right. In all events, shapes A and B moved 120 frames each, covering a distance of 6 cm each. The animations were presented in two versions. In the rst set, the squares moved rigidly at a constant speed of about 2 pixels/frame (about 3 cm/s), except for the ambiguous event. In the second set, they moved non-rigidly, expanding and contracting with the same average translation speed. With the left edge stationary, the nonrigid square expanded horizontally for 20 frames at a rate of 4 pixels/frame (about 6 cm/s) to a rectangle of 60 9 140 pixels (1.5 9 3.5 cm). Then it contracted at the same speed with the right edge stationary until the original shape was recovered. These steps repeated three times during each shapes motion. The two sets involved corresponding events with identical temporal and spatial conguration (except for the cued stimuli which only involved rigid motion). In some movies B moved only after contact with A: In launching with and without attentional cue, A stopped upon contact with B. B began to move after 1 frame (about 17 ms). In cued launching, B began to ash off and on after A had moved 84 frames (about 1.4 s). It ashed for 25 frames (425 ms), stopping 11 frames (about 187 ms) prior to contact. In entraining, A moved up to B, then continued forward, pushing B for 40 frames (about 680 ms) before stopping. In delayed launching A moved up to B, and B started moving after 120 frames contact (about 2 s). In some events B moved without contact: In the reaction event with and without cue, A moved for 80 frames, then B began to move as well, with 100 pixels (about 2.5 cm) separation between shapes. Both shapes moved simultaneously for 40 frames (about 680 ms) before A stopped, and B continued to move for another 80 frames (about 1.360 s). In the delayed reaction A moved close to B (20 pixels, about .5 cm separation), and B started moving after 120 frames (about 2 s) contact. In the cued reaction, ashing began with the movement of B and lasted 25 frames (425 ms) as in the launch event. Finally, in the ambiguous event, A moved at the standard speed, while B moved at half speed of 1 pixel/frame (1.5 cm/s). A moved for 80 frames, then B began to move as well, with 40 frames simultaneous motion at a distance, as in the standard reaction event. At the end of this period, A had caught up with B, stopping upon contact, as in the standard launch event. B then moved alone for another 80 frames. To equate cycle length between events with different temporal congurations, stationary periods at the beginning and end of each cycle were adjusted. Children chose from three (14 9 21 cm) pictures of a boy pushing a cart (physical causality), chasing a girl (social causality) or standing with a girl walking by (independent, non-causal motion). Two additional movies

and pictures were used only for practice. In the apart movie A and B appeared side by side in the middle of the screen, then moved rigidly towards opposite directions. In the climb movie the two squares were in their usual position, then A climbed over B. The corresponding pictures showed a boy and a girl back-to-back, walking away from one another, and a boy climbing over a fence. Procedure The procedure used was similar to that used by Ray and Schlottmann (2007) with two main differences: In the present study more verbal instructions were provided, and children were prompted about animacy for the second set of non-rigid stimuli. Children were tested individually in a quiet room, in a session of 2030 min. During training, children were familiarised with the pictures and the picture-matching procedure. Children were initially asked to describe the pictures, the Experimenter (E.) listened to the child, gave prompts and verbally reinforced correct answers, or provided an adequate description in order to avoid misinterpretations. For the training pictures, E. said the boy is climbing over, he goes up and then down and the children are walking in two opposite directions, one is going this way and the other is going that way, while pointing to appropriate parts of each picture. For the experimental pictures E said the boy is pushing the cart, or the boy is standing while the girl is walking away, or the boy is chasing after the girl, she escapes. The familiarisation with the pictures was usually rehearsed twice, with E asking the child to describe each picture, providing the correct interpretation as needed and asking again to check that the child understood and recalled. Then the apart and climb movies were used to explain that the task required to match pictures and movies. After a few repetitions of the climbing movie E. asked the child: Did you see the two squares moving? Does it look like one of these pictures? Which one? The same was done with the apart movie. After the training, both training drawings were removed. At the beginning of the test, E. told the child that he/she would see the shapes moving and should choose an image for each movie just like before. After the child saw each animation, E. asked two general questions what happens in the movie? and what do the squares do? and the child chose a picture. If the child hesitated, E. asked if the movie was similar to one of the pictures. Each stimulus repeated until the child gave an answer, typically 24 times. The second set involving the non-rigid movies was presented after a 25 min break. Before starting the rst movie to the child, E. said This will be different from what you have seen before. After the child had watched the

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animation E. asked What do the red and the blue look like? and What could they be? If the child identied the shapes as caterpillars, worms, snakes, slugs or similar, E. said good, its true, you are right, or, if the child didnt answer or answered rectangles or similar, E. said yes, but they could also seem worms, or snakes, dont you think? Then all children who needed explicit prompting were told to watch again, and the procedure was repeated. Following this, children were asked about the causality of the movie, in the manner outlined above, then the next movie was shown. Childrens picture choices were recorded by E. and, for all but 4 children, also by a second observer blind to the stimulus shown. Observers agreed in 99% of the cases. In case of disagreement, the blind observers response was taken for the analysis. In 4 instances, children spontaneously picked 2 pictures, so two answers were recorded.

Results Causal Perception Childrens causal choices are in Fig. 5. The data for rigid events (top panels) show that both children with autism and

controls identied the various events appropriately, mostly choosing the physical collision picture (light gray bar on left) for launch events with and without cue and for entraining events. They mostly chose the social, chase picture (dark bar in the middle) for reaction events with and without cue. Delayed events were mostly seen as noncausal (mid gray bar on right). No weakness on either launch or reaction events was apparent for children with autism. The only notable difference in perception of the rigid motions between children with autism and controls appears for the ambiguous event, showing a reaction followed by a collision: children with autism saw this largely as physical, while controls showed a split pattern. Both children with autism and controls gave somewhat more social attributions to non-rigid events, as apparent in the extended dark bars in the bottom panels of Fig. 5. For some events, this tendency appears slightly more pronounced in the autism group. Children with autism and normal controls still tended to attribute physical causality to launch, social causality to reaction stimuli and noncausality to delayed events with non-rigid as with rigid agents, but responses to entraining and ambiguous events with non-rigid agents are now split for both groups of children.

Fig. 5 Proportion of picture choices (%) for each of 14 events listed to the left of the data; autism left panel, control right, rigid-motion top, non-rigid motion bottom, light gray physical causality, dark gray social causality, mid gray non causal. On the left are listed the mean

causal scores for each event, as used in the ANOVA. A score close to 1 indicates prevalence of physical causality choices, a score close to 0 indicates prevalence of non causal choices or mixed responses, a negative score indicates prevalence of social causality choices

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For the statistical analysis, following Schlottmann et al. (2002), physical responses were coded as 1, social as -1, and non-causal as 0. (If children chose 2 pictures, the average score was used). These causal scores are also listed in Fig. 5, on the right in each panel, showing positive scores for launch events, i.e., physical attributions, negative scores for reaction events, i.e., social attributions, and generally low scores around 0 for delayed control events with and without contact. This reects the causal-noncausal distinction and the domain distinction within the causal events that were already evident in the raw choice data. Because children were matched on mental age, but differed in VIQ, we initially assessed whether this variable related to performance on the 14 events. However, only one of 14 across-group correlations was signicant, such that higher VIQ was linked to a stronger tendency to attribute social causality to ambiguous events involving rigid motion, r = -.354, p = .023. This was due to the control children, r = -.450, p = .036, with r = .054 for children with autism. For the control children, but not children with autism, higher VIQ was also associated with a tendency to attribute social causality to non-rigid reaction events, r = -.471, p = .027, The correlation between VIQ and a composite score across all 14 events reached r = .034 overall, with r = .071 and .005 for children with autism and controls, respectively. Thus, VIQ was not associated with childrens causal scores, either within or across groups.1 As would be expected therefore, ANCOVA on the childrens mean causal scores for either the 8 events of the main design, as considered just below, or for all 14 events, with groups as between subjects factor and VIQ as a covariate (Winer et al. 1991) found no effects, all F \ 1, so VIQ was not considered further. For our main analysis, a 2 group (autism, control) 9 2 spatial conguration (contact, non-contact), 9 2 temporal conguration (delay, no delay) 9 2 type of motion (rigid, non-rigid) mixed model factorial ANOVA was conducted on the 8 stimuli previously used by Ray and Schlottmann (2007).2 The spatial conguration main effect tests for whether children distinguish between physical and social causality. If children also distinguish between causal and non-causal events, we additionally expect a spatial 9 temporal conguration interaction, to reect that the domain distinction should appear for events without delay, while delayed events should all be treated as non-causal. The

The same results obtained for correlations between VIQ and childrens accuracy, with only 3 of 45 correlations within and across groups signicant. 2 ANOVA on categorical data is appropriate if proportions are not extreme (e.g., Lunney 1970; Rosenthal and Rosnow 1984).

temporal main effect itself should be 0, with positive and negative means for contact and non-contact events cancelling each other, and the delay mean should be 0 as well. The domain and causal-noncausal distinctions were reected in a main effect for the spatial conguration, F(1,39) = 95.89, MSe = 0.49, p \ 0.001, and a spatial 9 temporal conguration interaction, F(1,39) = 69.88, MSe = 0.44, p \ 0.001, as predicted. In addition, there was an effect for type of motion, F(1,39) = 7.04, MSe = 0.48, p = 0.01, with less positive/more negative scores, i.e., more social attributions, to non-rigid motion. Finally, there was a marginal main effect for the temporal conguration, F(1,39) = 3.75, MSe = 0.25, p = 0.06, and for the temporal conguration 9 group interaction F(1,39) = 2.9, MSe = 0.25, p = 0.09. These effects were largely due to children with typical development having slightly negative rather than 0 scores for causal, slightly positive rather than 0 scores for delayed events. There were no other effects, in particular, there were no signicant group differences between children with autism and the control group, all remaining F \ 1. Analyses of the two cued events showed that they were not treated differently from the equivalent events without cue. There were also no group differences, with the largest effect involving either factor reaching F(1,39) = 0.63. The only signicant effect in the 2 group 9 2 cue 9 2 spatial conguration ANOVA was the spatial conguration main effect, F(1,39) = 118.74, MSe = 0.65, p \ 0.001, conrming again the clear distinction between launch and reaction events. Analysis of the entraining event showed that this was treated as more physical than the reaction event (which had an identical amount of simultaneous motion, but no contact). This was reected in the main effect of event, F(1,39) = 19.02, MSe = 0.545, p \ 0.001, in the 2 group 9 2 event 9 2 type of motion ANOVA. In addition, there was an effect for type of motion, F(1,39) = 99.29, MSe = 0.48, p = \ 0.001, with non-rigid entraining events appearing less physical. All other effects, including those involving group, were non-signicant, with the largest reaching F(1,39) = 2.38. When entraining was compared to launching (which also had contact, but no simultaneous motion), the 2 group 9 2 type of motion 9 2 event ANOVA, found main effects for event, F(1,39) = 7.97, MSe = 0.43, p = 0.007, and for type of motion F(1,39) = 12.46, MSe = 0.63, p = 0.001. Although the interaction is marginal, F(1,39) = 3.61, p = 0.06, it is evident from the scores that both groups of children treated launching and entraining as equally physical when the shapes moved rigidly, but entraining appeared distinctly less physical than launching when they moved non-rigidly. All other effects were nonsignicant, F \ 1. Again, there were no group differences.

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The ambiguous events (involving a reaction followed by a launch), received neutral scores close to 0 for the control children, both with rigid and non-rigid motion. If the shapes moved non-rigidly, the same appeared for children with autism, but they gave distinctly more physical attributions when the shapes moved rigidly. The corresponding group 9 type of motion interaction was marginal, F(1,39) = 3.26, MSe = 0.75, p = 0.07. All other effects in the 2 group 9 2 type of motion ANOVA were non-significant. The physical interpretation given by children with autism also appeared for younger typically developing children in a prior study (Watts et al. 2007) while the neutral score is closer to the pattern found for normal adults. Individual response patterns conrm that children were not guessing. In the autism group, 14 of 19 children performed above chance, as did 17 of 22 control children (9 or more correct in 14; binomial test, p = 0.017), and these children made on average 2.92 and 2.88 errors only. Thus individual and group performance corresponds. Childrens deviations from the correct pattern typically involved errors on both causal and non-causal events, while previous work had found that childrens errors were largely restricted to non-causal events, with children over-attributing causality to these (Schlottmann et al. 2002). The discrepancy, however, is largely an artefact of the event selection here: 10 of 14 events were causal, so the likelihood of errors on these was higher than on non-causal events. Although less than 30% of stimuli were non-causal, almost 40% of errors appeared for these events, rising to 67% for children with autism and to 72% for those in the control group, if only children performing above chance are considered. The same appears from Table 2, which

shows individual response patterns for the 8 main stimuli, i.e., for a balanced event sample with half causal, half noncausal stimuli. Nevertheless, about two-thirds of the errors occurred for non-causal events, in agreement with previous work. Thus children over-attributed causality in the present study as well. No differences appeared in this between children with autism and control children. Overall, our results demonstrate intact perception of causality in children with autism, at both the group and individual level. Performance was substantially better than in Ray and Schlottmann (2007), with 70% correct choices for children with autism, and 67% for normal controls, across launch, reaction and delayed events, compared to 43% in the earlier study for children with autism, 44 and 55% for two control groups. Most importantly, in contrast to Ray and Schlottmann (2007), children with autism had no weakness on launch events in the present study, or on various novel events that shared some features of launching. Animacy Perception While causality perception was unimpaired, animacy perception was impaired in the autism group. When rst asked what A and B looked like, only 37% of the children with autism described the non-rigid agents as caterpillars, snakes, slugs (see Table 3) while 42% described them as inanimate, and 21% gave no answer. This contrasts with 77% animate and 23% inanimate descriptions for the control children. After being told explicitly that the shapes could be animate agents, all of the control children and 68% of children with autism described them as animate,

Table 2 Number of children with different response patterns (% in brackets) and total number of errors made by these children Response patterns Autism group Number of children (%) Number of errors On non causal On causal events events Above chance level performance All correct Errors on non-causal events only Errors on non-causal and causal events Errors on causal events only Chance level performance Total 2 (11) 6 (31) 2 (11) 4 (21) 5 (26) 19 11 5 13 29 (63%) 3 5 9 17 (37%) 3 (14) 7 (31) 6 (27) 1 (5) 5 (23) 22 Control group Number of children (%) Number of errors On non causal On causal events events 14 8 11 33 (63%) 6 2 11 19 (37%)

Note: All correct refers to push responses for launch events, chase responses for reaction events, and non-causal responses to all delayed events, regardless of whether the shape moved rigidly or non-rigidly. For comparability across studies, this Table 2 considers only the 8 events also used by Ray and Schlottmann (2007), Schlottmann et al. (2002) and Schlottmann et al. (2006)

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48 Table 3 Descriptions of nonrigid agents before and after prompting; animate responses in bold

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Control group Before prompting/after prompting 1. Elastics, caterpillars 2. Caterpillars 3. Stripes/Caterpillars, snakes 4. Rectangles/Kangarooscaterpillars 5. Legs of a rabbit/Worms 6. Snake 7. Slugs 8. Snake 9. Rectangles/Snakes 10. They jump and expand/Caterpillars 11. It expands and contracts/Caterpillar, slug 12. Caterpillars 13. They runfrogs/Snakes 14. Worms 15. They runthey jumpsnakes 16. They run, caterpillars 17. Worms 18. Slugs 19. Snakes 20. Caterpillars 21. Accordion, running puma/Slug 22. Slugs

Autism group Before prompting/after prompting 1. Rectangles/Rectangles 2. Snakes 3. Rectangles/Snakes 4. Rectangles/Snakes 5. /Caterpillars 6. Snakes 7. Rectangles/Snakes 8. Snakes 9. Slugs 10. Snakes 11. Rectangles/Rectangles 12. Rectangles/Rectangles 13. Worms 14. Worms or snakes 15. Rectangles/Rectangles 16. Rectangles/Caterpillars 17. / 18. / 19. /Snakes

11% still gave no answer and 21% still described them as inanimate. For the statistical analysis inanimate or no descriptions were coded as 0, animate descriptions as 1. The less frequent occurrence of animate descriptions in children with autism was reected in a main effect of group, F(1,39) = 12.26, MSe = 0.21, p = 0.001, in a 2 group 9 2 prompt ANOVA on the animacy scores. The increased occurrence of animate descriptions after prompting was reected in the main effect of prompt, F(1,39) = 14.71, MSe = 0.10, p \ 0.001. The interaction was non-signicant, F \ 1, i.e., both groups improved to the same extent. These results were conrmed non-parametrically, with signicant group differences both prior to and after prompting (Mann-Whitney U = 124.5, p = 0.01, and U = 143, p = 0.005, respectively). The overall correlation between VIQ and performance was r = .341, p = .029, and although it did not reach signicance for either group of children alone, we recomputed the analysis with VIQ as covariate and group as between subjects factor. The group effect remained signicant, F(1,38) = 5.59, MSE = .110, p = .024, with F \ 1 for the covariate. The same appeared when only the prompted descriptions were considered, with F(1,38) = 6.87, MSE = .013, p = .013 for group, and F \ 1 for the covariate. When only the spontaneous descriptions were considered, however, neither VIQ, F \ 1, nor

group, F(1,38) = 2.34, MSE = .218, p = .135 reached signicance. In sum, children with autism had difculties in identifying animal-like motion relative to control children. It appears that these group differences, in part, but not completely, reect VIQ differences between children with and without autism.

Discussion In this study, high-functioning children with autism (mean VMA 9.7 years) perceived physical and social causal Gestalts as well as matched children with typical development, but had difculty recognizing animacy in Michotte (1946/1963) caterpillar stimulus. Both groups of children responded in a mature fashion on the causality task, using temporal information to distinguish causal from non-causal events and spatial information to differentiate physical from social causality. Overall good performance indicates that children did not have problems with the test itself, and conrms that understanding of the pictures, movies and procedure was adequate. Accordingly, the present animacy decit would seem to reect more than just generally low intellectual or verbal functioning in autism, despite some remaining unclarity of interpretation, discussed below.

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Launch Perception Unimpaired perception of launch events in the present study is in contrast to Ray and Schlottmanns (2007) nding that children with autism performed at chance level for launching. These authors argued that their launch decit could reect a local processing bias emerging with very brief visual information (Mottron and Belleville 1993), but in the present study, children with autism had no difculties with launching or other stimuli representing physical interactions (entraining, cued launching), and they preferred the physical interpretation for an ambiguous event, like younger normal children in Watts et al. (2007) study. The children here clearly had a good grasp of physical causality in all its manifestations. Two factors could account for the difference in results, the more elaborate verbal instructions or higher age of the children here (9.6 VMA, 13.0 CA versus 5.1 VMA and 8.4 CA in the earlier study). That the language of the instructions is in part responsible is suggested by the low overall performance even for control children in Ray and Schlottmann (2007); in the present study, performance was higher and closer to that in Schlottmann et al. (2002). It would thus seem that the 1- or 2-word language in Ray and Schlottmann (2007) obscured the meaning of the task somewhat. While some argue that perceptual causality is a hardwired automatic reaction of the perceptual system (Scholl and Tremoulet 2000), its measurement draws on more cognitive processes (Schlottmann 2000) even in tasks with low verbal demands. Note that the two VMA matched groups here were both at a verbal level sufcient to cope with the instructions, while the otherwise perceptual task meant that beyond this there was no relationand there should not be anybetween individual differences in PC and VIQ, i.e., in verbal learning ability (rather than functioning) of the children. This account does not, of course, explain the specic improvement found here for launch events. However, launch perception might be even more verbally mediated than reaction perception with the present method because the picture for physical causality showed no contact between the agents, to avoid matching based on spatial contiguity rather than causality. This means, that physical causality has to be recognised from a picture that does not give a prototypical view of a collision, which might be difcult for low functioning children with autism. Although children with autism understand collisions in picture sequences, with each image scaffolded by other images (Baron Cohen et al. 1986), or in the present study with the image scaffolded linguistically, in Ray and Schlottmann (2007), a single atypical image had to be read without such aids.

Alternatively, the specic improvement on launching found here might be due to children with autism overcoming an early impairment with brief stimuli as they grow older. It is unlikely, however, that this is linked to a developmental shift towards global processing of such and Frith stimuli: A local processing bias in general (Happe 2006 for review), and of very brief stimuli in particular (Mottron and Belleville 1993), has been reported at all ages. Indeed, results for the Block design subtest of the WISC-R, a measure of local processing, were available for 8 children in the present sample with autism, and a high mean score of 10.88 (range 915), accompanied the global causal perception. Instead, the specic improvement in launching found here relative to Ray and Schlottmann (2007) could be related to developmental improvements in attention (Townsend et al. 1996; Allen and Courchesne 2001). Attentional processes in young children with autism might be described as obligatory, with difculties in voluntary disengagement, as in infants (Stechler and Latz 1966; Hood et al. 1998). Young children with autism show slow attention shifting and have problems in disengaging attention from one of two competing stimuli (Landry and Bryson 2004). Slow attentional orienting is a distinct decit in autism at all ages, but more pronounced in children (Harris et al. 1999), which could explain why younger children with autism in Ray and Schlottmann (2007), but not our older children, had problems with launch perception. The present study included events designed to test the attentional account of weak launch perception. Since children had no difculty with these events, they might be useful in future tests with younger samples. Work with eye tracking methods might also be useful to illuminate attentional processes in PC. Reaction Perception The nding that children with autism are not impaired in reaction perception conrmed previous studies (Bowler and Thommen 2000; Ray and Schlottmann 2007), but with a test more sensitive to any potential decit. This lack of impairment contrasts with their difculties in everyday social interactions and social descriptions of more complex animations (Klin 2000; Bowler and Thommen 2000). This contrast suggests that perception of causality at a distance is not directly related to social or mental state reasoning found for more complex animations. This may be because perception of reaction causality does not require mental state attribution. Even normal adults often describe reaction events with goal-directed rather than mental state language (Schlottmann et al. 2006), but children with autism use goal-directed language also to describe complex animations that normal subjects describe in mental state terms (Abell et al. 2000; Castelli et al. 2002).

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Neuroimaging studies also suggest differences in social perception of complex and simple animations, with the medial prefrontal cortex activated in studies of the former (Castelli et al. 2002) but not the latter (Blakemore et al. 2003; Blakemore et al. 2001). Simple causal interactions may directly relate to immediate, visible goals, with clear meaning for children with autism, as suggested by work on imitation of simple goal-directed actions on objects (Vivanti et al. 2008), and on perception of schematic interactions involving geometrical shapes (Abell et al. 2000; Castelli et al. 2002; Klin 2000). But similar interactions embedded in complex sequences may relate to higher order social goals, requiring processes of social and mental state attribution not directly accessible to people with autism. Unimpaired reaction perception would not seem to t with the idea that perception of causality might support developing social/mental state understanding. However, late prociency does not rule out delayed emergence: If children with autism lack reaction perception during early infancy this might still contribute to later social decits. To evaluate this possibility would require testing of younger children with autism, children even younger than in Ray and Schlottmann (2007) to check for very early anomalies in reaction perception. Animacy Perception A second aspect of social perception in our study was the perception of animacy. Many have treated the perception of animacy and of social causality or intentionality and goal-directedness as more or less equivalent (e.g., Scholl and Tremoulet 2000; Rutherford et al. 2006), however, one concerns the nature of the agents, the other the interpretation of the events in which they engage. From knowledge about the event one might infer the identity of the agents, and conversely, the identity of the agents gives clues as to the type of event they likely engage in, but nevertheless, agent identication and event interpretation are not conceptually identical and can, as in this study, appear empirically distinct (see the current debate on how infants understand the social world, e.g., Biro and Leslie 2007; Gergely and Csibra 2003; Luo and Baillargeon 2005). Perception of animacy from pattern of motion is usually studied with point-light stimuli (Johansson 1973), but can emerge also in articial schematic displays, as originally suggested by (Michotte 1946/1963; also see Scholl and Tremoulet 2000). In our study, children with autism were impaired in the identication of Michottes caterpillar as animate. This ts with previous work showing behavioural impairments and differences in neural processing of pointlight biological motion in autism (Blake et al. 2003; Freitag et al. 2007; Herrington et al. 2007; Klin et al. 2003; Klin

and Jones 2008). One possible explanation is that this decit might be related to atypical global processing (Dakin and Frith 2005; Pellicano et al. 2005). The present data would seem to also suggest an impairment for the schematic motion of geometric shapes, as studied here. This articial form of biological motion may not appear ecologically valid, but adults (Schlottmann et al. 2006), and typically developing children from 3 years (Schlottmann et al. 2002) have strong impressions of animacy for these stimuli. Moreover, infants as young as 6 months already treat the motion of such caterpillars towards one of two goals as animate (Schlottmann and Ray 2009). Further studies would seem warranted on the perception of both naturalistic and articial biological motion in autism. The animacy decit found here may be in part a perceptual decit and in part a verbal learning decit. Our animacy task was more verbal than our causality task, it correlated with VIQ, and VIQ differences accounted in part for the group differences in spontaneous, though not prompted animacy responses. Children with autism and control children were at a matched level of verbal functioning (VMA) but differed in CA and in VIQ relative to CA age norms, i.e., children with autism had learning difculties and slower rate of intellectual development (Jarrold and Brock 2004). We thus have to allow for the possibility that, despite equivalent level of verbal functioning, these verbal learning difculties per se might make it more difcult for children with autism to nd an appropriate verbal description for the unfamiliar non-rigid stimuli presented here and to refrain from an overly literal interpretation of the question (what do the red and blue look like?like rectangles). Nevertheless, the group difference in animacy perception remained even after prompting, and VIQ did not affect this at all, so the animacy decit clearly goes beyond a difculty with learning to describe novel visual stimuli. While children with autism found it more difcult than controls to perceive the non-rigid stimuli as animate, prompting increased their socially causal attributions as much as for control children. Similarly, in Rutherford et al. (2006) children with autism, when taught to distinguish animate from inanimate shapes based on motion cues suggesting internal versus external energy sources eventually performed at the same level as control children, but took signicantly longer to learn. Both ndings t either with the view that children with autism orient less towards social information, even if they can process this information (Dawson et al. 1998), or that they engage in strategic compensation to make up for decient perception. The strategic compensation view is perhaps more plausible here than in Rutherford et al.s (2006) study, because our sample was older and because we provided verbal prompts and verbal feedback about the correct interpretation.

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Children might have found it easier to access the implications of animacy for the causal interpretation from the verbal information rather than from the visual displays. All in all, differences appeared between spontaneous and prompted animacy perceptions, and between animacy perceptions and perception of social causality involving these animates, all pertaining to the same animated stimuli and measured in the same children. These differences highlight that social perception is not a unitary process. Our ndings point to a need for ner grained conceptual analysis of which aspects of social perception might be impaired in autism, to go hand in hand with process analysis. Conclusions In the present study children with high-functioning autism showed unimpaired perception of causality of launch, reaction and related events. This conrms previous ndings of intact reaction perception (Ray and Schlottmann 2007) and suggests that the launch decit that appears for younger children with autism (Ray and Schlottmann 2007) can be overcome with age or more articulated verbal instructions. This does not rule out a link between PC and autism, but this will need to be explored in much younger children. This also does not rule out lingering decits in older children, if a more complex task drawing on PC is used. However, the more complex the task, the more difcult it becomes to separate the contributions of PC proper from those of the ancillary skills involved in expressing this causality and reasoning about it. The present study also found that children with autism were impaired in recognizing the animacy of articial animal motion. This nding extends previous work showing that children with autism have problems with biological motion processing. When told how to interpret the motion pattern, children with autism could nevertheless understand the implication of this motion for causality attributions as well as normal controls. This strengthens our above view that causality perception per se is unimpaired. It also suggests that high-functioning children with autism, might be able to compensate for any problems of animacy perception, or of orienting towards such stimuli, at a more strategic level. Our ndings could have implications for intervention. Animations are usually attractive for children with autism and can be used for simplied representation of interactions between agents. This could be a way to provide relevant social information to them while avoiding some of the aversive features of realistic social stimulation. The present results suggest, however, that careful attention is needed to the type of social information provided through animation, as decits may extend into this domain. The

development of perceptual causality and animacy in autism is a fascinating topic for study, because it has the potential to illuminate the involvement of some basic processes of social perception in this disorder. Conversely, what we may learn from children with autism may help us better understand these basic processes.
Acknowledgments This paper is based on SCs doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Siena. SC was supported by a doctoral fellowship of Regione Sardegna and by the University of Siena, AS and ER were supported by ESRC grant R000230198. Many thanks to the children and parents involved, in particular to Giacomo Vivanti for his comments and his help in testing children with autism, to the staff at the Neuropsychiatry Unit at the Hospital in Siena, and LAquila, to the staff at the Quartu S.E. primary school, and to Luca Surian for discussion.

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