Testing predictive coding theories of autism spectrum disorder using models of active inference

Tom Arthur, Sam Vine, Gavin Buckingham, Mark Brosnan, Mark Wilson, David Harris

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Citations (SciVal)

Abstract

Several competing neuro-computational theories of autism have emerged from predictive coding models of the brain. To disentangle their subtly different predictions about the nature of atypicalities in autistic perception, we performed computational modelling of two sensorimotor tasks: the predictive use of manual gripping forces during object lifting and anticipatory eye movements during a naturalistic interception task. In contrast to some accounts, we found no evidence of chronic atypicalities in the use of priors or weighting of sensory information during object lifting. Differences in prior beliefs, rates of belief updating, and the precision weighting of prediction errors were, however, observed for anticipatory eye movements. Most notably, we observed autism-related difficulties in flexibly adapting learning rates in response to environmental change (i.e., volatility). These findings suggest that atypical encoding of precision and context-sensitive adjustments provide a better explanation of autistic perception than generic attenuation of priors or persistently high precision prediction errors. Our results did not, however, support previous suggestions that autistic people perceive their environment to be persistently volatile.
Original languageEnglish
Article numbere1011473
Number of pages23
JournalPlos Computational Biology
Volume19
Issue number9
Early online date11 Sept 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding: This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [grant number: ES/P000630/1], with TA receiving a South-West Doctoral Training Partnership PhD studentship, and a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship awarded to DH. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Data Availability Statement: All relevant data and code is available online from: https://osf.io/5k48n/. Plotted curves are available at https://osf.io/r9gxf,
Autism Spectrum Quotient questionnaire available.

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