No differences in implicit hand maps among different degrees of autistic traits

Hidaka, S. and Chen, N. and Ishii, N. and Iketani, R. and Suzuki, K. and Longo, Matthew and Wada, M. (2023) No differences in implicit hand maps among different degrees of autistic traits. Autism Research , ISSN 1939-3792.

Abstract

People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or higher autistic traits have atypical characteristics in sensory processing. Atypicalities have been reported for proprioceptive judgments, which is tightly related to internal bodily representations underlying position sense. However, no research has directly investigated whether self-bodily representations are different in individuals with ASD. Implicit hand maps, estimated based on participants’ proprioceptive sensation without sight of their hand, are known to have a distortion such that the shape is stretched along the medio-lateral hand axis even for neurotypical participants. Here, with the view of ASD as falling on a continuous distribution among the general population, we explored differences in implicit body representations along with autistic traits by focusing on relationships between autistic traits and the magnitudes of the distortions in implicit hand maps (N ~ 100). We estimated the magnitudes of distortions in implicit hand maps both for fingers and hand surfaces on the dorsal and palmar sides of the hand. Autistic traits were measured by questionnaires (Autism Spectrum (AQ) and Empathy/Systemizing (EQ-SQ) Quotients). Whereas the distortions in implicit hand maps were replicated in our experimental situations, there were no significant relationships between autistic traits and the magnitudes of the distortions as well as within-individual variabilities in the maps and localization performances. Consistent results were observed from comparisons between IQ-matched samples of people with and without a diagnosis of ASD. Our findings suggest that there exist consistent perceptual and neural processes for internal, implicit body representations underlying position sense with different degrees of autistic traits.

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