Abstract
The ability to determine whether the actions of other individuals are friendly or formidable are key decisions we need to make to successfully navigate our complex social environment. In this study we measured perceptual performance when discriminating actions that vary in their friendliness or formidableness, and whether performance was related to the autistic traits of individuals. To do this, we developed an action morphing method to generate novel actions that lied along the action quality dimensions of formidableness and friendliness. In Experiment 1 we show that actions that vary along the formidableness or friendliness continua were rated as varying monotonically along the respective quality. In Experiment 2 we measured the ability of individuals with different levels of autistic traits to discriminate action formidableness and friendliness using adaptive 2-AFC procedures. We found considerable variation in perceptual thresholds when discriminating action formidableness (~540% interindividual variation) or action friendliness (~1100% interindividual variation). However, we found no evidence that this variance in action discrimination ability was affected by individuals’ autistic traits. We attribute these findings to the ability of individuals with varying levels of autistic traits and different cognitive styles to achieve similar performance outcomes when attempting to determine action formidableness and friendliness.
| Original language | English |
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| Publication status | Published - 19 Jan 2024 |
| Event | National Collegiate Research Conference - Harvard University, Boston, United States Duration: 19 Jan 2024 → 21 Jan 2024 https://science.fas.harvard.edu/national-collegiate-research-conference |
Conference
| Conference | National Collegiate Research Conference |
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| Country/Territory | United States |
| City | Boston |
| Period | 19/01/24 → 21/01/24 |
| Internet address |