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Encyclopedia of Autism Spectrum Disorders pp 1–9Cite as

Perception

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Definition

Perception includes the selection, organization, and interpretation of external information coming from the senses up to a complete representation of a stimulus. The extraction of elementary features within primary cortical receiving areas in each sensory modality is called low-level perception. It is domain general such that the same mechanisms are involved in processing social and nonsocial information. At a higher level of integration, there is pattern construction in which elementary features (e.g., of visual or auditory stimuli) are grouped into basic configurations. Visual motion perception depends on information integrated at various levels of the processing hierarchy: first-order motion is perceived in primary areas, while second-order motion requires a network of associative regions. High-level perception involves the matching of constructed configurations with memorized templates as the hierarchy of perceptual processing becomes gradually more domain specific. In...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hôpital Rivière des Prairies, Centre de recherche du CIUSS du Nord de l’île de Montréal et département de psychiatrie de l’Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada

    Laurent Mottron & Michelle Dawson

  2. Department of Psychology, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Montréal, QC, Canada

    Isabelle Soulières

Authors
  1. Laurent Mottron
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  2. Isabelle Soulières
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  3. Michelle Dawson
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Correspondence to Laurent Mottron .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Yale Child Study Center, New Haven, CT, USA

    Fred R. Volkmar

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Mottron, L., Soulières, I., Dawson, M. (2019). Perception. In: Volkmar, F. (eds) Encyclopedia of Autism Spectrum Disorders. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6435-8_648-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6435-8_648-3

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  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-6435-8

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