Priming Global Processing Strategy Improves the Perceptual Performance of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

We investigated (1) if the perceptual integration performance is different in children with ASD in comparison with their typically developed (TD) counterparts; and (2) if activating- priming- the global processing strategy, could benefit the integration performance of children with ASD in the subsequent task. We observed that in comparison with the TD group, children with ASD had lower performance in an information integration task that required identification of illusory shapes. Additionally, we observed that priming the global processing strategy increased the correct identification of the illusory shapes in the subsequent task. We suggested that studies on priming effect shed light on the different aspects of perceptual properties of ASD, and could also be used in developing new rehabilitation plans.