"Perception in autism: Updating what means 'enhanced'"

The Enhanced Perceptual Functioning model (EPF; Mottron et al. 2001, 2006, 2009) is a description of autistic perceptual phenotype. According to EPF, autistic perception is characterized by enhanced low-level operations; locally-oriented processing as a default setting; greater activation of perceptual areas during a range of visuo-spatial, language, working memory, or reasoning tasks; enhanced role in guiding exploratory behaviours, autonomy towards higher processes; and superior involvement in intelligence. Descriptive principles have been preferred to explanatory deficits because autism is a form of life in itself. Therefore, deficit-oriented comparisons with neuro-typicals cannot account for what is a distributed, multi-level difference between autistic and non autistic humans. The current paper will expose the updated state of knowledge on elementary mechanisms for which a distinction between autistic and non autistic perceptual processing can be evident. It also moves one step forward toward a systematization of these principles. We propose now that the three major components of EPF, a) superior performance in discrimination for information relying on neuraly simple analysers (e.g. Pitch processing), b) superior role of low-level perception in mid-level operations (e.g.: local bias in compound stimuli), and c) superior role of perception in operations requiring coupling of perception and other cognitive systems (e.g.: superior involvement of visual ES areas during problem solving) share a common, formal property. Main cognitive operations can be classified as a more (veridical) or less (hierarchical) isomorphic mapping between systems of representations. Within this framework, the relative weighting between hierarchical mapping and veridical mapping characterizing the cognitive architecture of non autistics is displaced toward the latter in autism. More specific alleged mechanisms like increased lateral inhibition, imbalance between parvo- and magno-cellular pathways, increased sensitivity to high spatial frequencies, local bias, and non-strategic parallel learning and problem solving, although functionally independent, can be unified under this common description.