Editorial Preface

Our primary objective in proposing and editing this special issue was to provide a forum for the emerging and rapidly expanding area of study of perception in autism. This includes the rethinking and reworking of the predominant theories in light of recent empirical findings, reviews of domain-specific research within the context of advances in basic neuroscience research on perception, and examples of state-of-the art research in this area. Despite the recent growth of interest and activity, as evident in the contributions to this special issue, perception is not exactly a new area of research in the study of autism. Rather, the conceptual roots of the basic tenets and many essential areas of the current work date back to the earliest eras of autism research. For example, both Frith’s (1970a, b) findings of the skewing of processing toward superficial, or perceptual, aspects of display materials in pattern recognition and reproduction and Shah and Frith’s (1983) discussions of islets of abilities in the Embedded Figure Task in relation to diminished top-down influences and locally oriented processing, can be seen as early precursors of Frith and Happé’s (Frith, 1989; Frith & Happé, 1994, this issue) seminal model of weak central coherence (WCC). Similarly, Ornitz’s (1974) idea of excessive, poorly modulated and subjectively disturbing sensory input presages some aspects of our Enhanced Perceptual Functioning (EPF) model (Mottron & Burack, 2001; Mottron, Dawson, Soulières, Hubert, & Burack, this issue), the current work on modified imbalance between low and high level visual processes in face recognition (Jemel et al., this issue) and the subjective perceptual experience of persons with autism (Iarocci & MacDonald, this issue). Other significant contributions in the 1970s and 1980s included papers on face processing (Hobson, Ouston, & Lee, 1988; Langdell, 1978; Volkmar, Sparrow, Rende, & Cohen, 1989), basic auditory processing (Martineau, Laffont, Bruneau, Roux, & Lelord, 1980), and sensory modulation (Kootz & Cohen, 1981; Kootz, Marinelli, & Cohen, 1982). …