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7/28/2019 Autism Social
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O RI G I N A L P A P E R
Unimpaired Perception of Social and Physical Causality,but Impaired Perception of Animacy in High Functioning
Children with Autism
Sara Congiu Anne Schlottmann Elizabeth Ray
Published online: 28 July 2009
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009
Abstract We investigated perception of social and
physical causality and animacy in simple motion events,for high-functioning children with autism (CA = 13,
VMA = 9.6). Children matched 14 different animations to
pictures showing physical, social or non-causality. In
contrast to previous work, children with autism performed
at a high level similar to VMA-matched controls, recog-
nizing physical causality in launch and social causality in
reaction events. The launch deficit previously found in
younger children with autism, possibly related to atten-
tional/verbal difficulties, is apparently overcome with age.
Some events involved squares moving non-rigidly, like
animals. Children with autism had difficulties recognizing
this, extending the biological motion literature. However,
animacy prompts amplified their attributions of social
causality. Thus children with autism may overcome their
animacy perception deficit strategically.
Keywords High-functioning autism
Perceptual causality Perceptual animacy
Introduction
Perceptual causality and animacy refer to perceptual illu-
sions in 2-dimensional displays devoid of real causality or
animate agents, illusions that can be related to the social
deficits and perceptual peculiarities of autism. Here, we
assess these illusions in high functioning children with
autism, to help illuminate basic processes of (social) per-
ception involved in the disorder.
Perceptual causality occurs in schematic events like
launching and reaction (Fig. 1) involving two geometrical
shapes (e.g., Schlottmann et al. 2006; Michotte 1946/1963;
Kanizsa and Vicario 1968). The events can be seen to
represent proto-typical physical and social interactions, i.e.,
elastic collisions with transfer of momentum and chase/
escape sequences with contingent motion-at-a-distance.
Although the animations are ambiguous (e.g., the shapes
can be perceived as 2-dimensional or a projection of
3-dimensional objects from the side or top/bottom) and
involve a reduced number of features (e.g., absence of
sound), they nevertheless give rise to convincing impres-
sions of causality, with adults usually describing the launch
event as A pushes B or A hits B and sets it in motion
and the reaction event as A chases B or B escapes from
Awith B reacting intentionally to A. These impressions
are, however, linked to the spatial and temporal event
configuration, with the introduction of even a brief pause
between A and Bs motion disrupting the causal illusion.
Perceptual causality (PC) emerges early in development
and might support causal learning and social motivation:
Children from age 3 (Schlottmann et al. 2002) and infants
as young as 6 months show sensitivity to the causal roles of
the agents in habituation paradigms (Leslie and Keeble
1987; Schlottmann and Surian 1999; Schlottmann et al.
2009; Oakes and Cohen 1994; Cohen and Amsel 1998).
S. Congiu
Dipartimento di Filosofia e Scienze Sociali, University of Siena,Siena, Italy
A. Schlottmann (&) E. Ray
Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University
College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK
e-mail: [email protected]
S. Congiu (&)
Dipartimento di Scienze della Cognizione e della Formazione,
University of Trento, Corso Bettini 31, 38068 Rovereto, TN,
Italy
e-mail: [email protected]
123
J Autism Dev Disord (2010) 40:3953
DOI 10.1007/s10803-009-0824-2
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Thus, PC could help infants identify causal events without
need for previous knowledge or experience, with percep-
tion of contact causality promoting learning about
mechanical interactions of material bodies (Leslie 1988,1995; Schlottmann 1999) while perception of non-contact
causality could promote learning about the social interac-
tions of intentional agents (Schlottmann and Surian 1999).
Impaired PC early in development, in contrast, could be
related to later problems in these areas. Accordingly, we
study PC in autism, using a sensitive method that may help
overcome some shortcomings of previous work (Bowler
and Thommen 2000; Ray and Schlottmann 2007).
Social Deficits in Autism and Perception of Causality at
a Distance
The social deficits characterising autism suggest that per-
ception of reaction causality could be impaired in this
population. Research on very early behavioural symptoms
of autism (Osterling et al. 2002; Chawarska and Volkmar
2005) has highlighted social impairments that precede even
the earliest precursors of theory of mind (ToM) skills,
suggesting that the lack of ToM (Baron Cohen et al. 1985)
could be consequence rather than cause of basic social and
perceptual disabilities (Klin et al. 1992).
Poor sensitivity to naturally occurring social stimuli,
lack of response to their own name (Osterling and Dawson
1994; Osterling et al. 2002), abnormal eye contact (Volk-
mar and Mayes 1990), lack of response to, as well as ini-
tiation of joint attention (Loveland and Landry 1986;
Mundy et al. 1990; Mundy and Neal 2001), and lack of
communicative intent (Tager-Flusberg et al. 2005) are
symptoms of autism in toddlers younger than two (Carter
et al. 2005). Two-year-olds with autism also show impaired
or abnormal perception of biological human motion in
point light displays (Klin et al. 2003; Klin and Jones 2008).
Overall, research supports the idea that the developmental
trajectory of children with autism differs from early on,
probably from birth, and that poor attention to social
stimuli goes hand in hand with anomalies in social
development.The limited salience of social stimuli and related lack of
interest in the social environment then limits further pos-
sibilities for learning to manage social interactions. This
may impact later outcome in addition to any biological
factors involved (Rogers et al. 2005). Along these lines,
problems with the perception of reaction causality might
contribute to the reduced amount of social information
available to children with autism early on, with negative
consequences for later understanding of the behaviour of
intentional agents.
People with autism not only have a qualitative deficit in
everyday social interactions, but also in the verbal
description of social elements in complex animated dis-
plays similar to those pioneered by Heider and Simmel
(1944) in which geometrical shapes interact in various
ways (Klin 2000; Bowler and Thommen 2000; Abell et al.
2000; Castelli et al. 2002). This is not related to age or
verbal IQ (Klin 2000) and no difficulty appears in the
description of contact interactions (Bowler and Thommen
2000). Thus children with autism may have difficulties in
the perception of social events. It is still unclear, however,
whether the difficulty is perceptual, in which case it should
appear even in much simpler animations, like reaction
events, or whether it reflects more general difficulties with
understanding social situations, needed to interpret com-
plex animations.
Two prior studies tested the perceptual view directly,
looking at PC in simple causal animations (Bowler and
Thommen 2000; Ray and Schlottmann 2007). Neither found
a deficit in reaction perception for children with autism
relative to normal children. However, both studies may have
lacked sensitivity: Bowler and Thommen (2000) studied
verbal reports, and even typically developing children
Fig. 1 a Launch event: The launch event (Michotte 1946/1963)
involves two squares, A on the left and B in the middle of the screen.
A starts moving towards B (from left to right) suddenly stopping upon
contact while at the same time B starts moving following the same
direction and then stopping. The version of the launch event (and
subsequent events) used here lasted 8 s, with the duration of each
motion phase indicated in the figure.b Reaction event: In the reaction
event (Kanizsa and Vicario 1968) A moves towards B (like in the
launch), but B starts moving before A reaches it, so that A and B
move simultaneously in the same direction, then A stops while B
continues to move for a while
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between 5 and 12 years often describe causal events in
spatio-temporal rather than causal terms (Thommen et al.
1998). Ray and Schlottmanns (2007) less verbal picture
matching method is sensitive to PC in normal children from
3 to 4 years (Schlottmann et al. 2002), but to test low-
functioning children with autism they used 1- and 2-word
utterance instructions, which led to a overall decrease in
performance even in the normal controls. The reducedinstruction may therefore have interfered with task under-
standing. The method of the present study is closer to that of
Schlottmann et al. (2002), for a test that is more sensitive
than previous work to any potential reaction deficit in
autism.
Perceptual Deficits in Autism and Perception of Contact
Causality
The non-social, perceptual and attentional deficits charac-
terising autism suggest that perception of launch causality,
or both reaction and launch causality might be impaired.The good performance of people with autism on perceptual
tasks requiring attention to local elements, like Wechsler
block-design (Shah and Frith 1983) or the embedded fig-
ures test (Shah and Frith 1993; Joliffe and Baron-Cohen
1997), and difficulties in tasks like face recognition on the
basis of holistic processing (Langdell 1978), were origi-
nally interpreted as two sides of the same coin. The most
influential theory of non-social symptoms of autism, the
Weak Central Coherence theory (WCC; Frith 1989; Happe
2005) was initially formulated to explain deficits and assets
in autism as originating from a difficulty to integrate details
into meaningful wholes.
Subsequent experimental findings confirmed enhanced
processing abilities at the local level, but also showed that
global processing occurs under some conditions (Mottron
et al. 2006; Mottron and Burack 2001; Ozonoff et al. 1994;
Plaisted et al. 1999; Plaisted 2001), as recognized in the
most recent version of WCC theory (Happe and Frith
2006). Mottron and Buracks (2001) enhanced perceptual
functioning model (EPF) similarly argues for superiority
per se of low-level perceptual operations unrelated to
processing of the global aspects of information, so that in
autism, in contrast to what happens in typical individuals,
higher-order control over cognition may not be mandatory
(Mottron et al. 2006). Regardless of which model is
adopted, a local processing bias in autism might predict a
general PC deficit: Perception of causality requires global
processing and attention to the overall causal gestalt rather
than the component motions. Bowler and Thommen
(2000), found no deficit, but this may reflect their insen-
sitive verbal task. Ray and Schlottmann (2007), on the
other hand, found a PC deficit, but only for launch
perception.
The inconsistency can be resolved by considering how
launch and reaction events differ. In particular, the crucial
moment of contact between the shapes in the launch event
is very brief, while the simultaneous motion of the shapes
in the reaction event extends over an extended time frame
of several hundred milliseconds. This difference in the
temporal characteristics of the events might mean that
launch events are more difficult to process for children withautism.
Two accounts might be given of this difficulty. First,
central control processes might operate slowly in autism
(Joliffe and Baron-Cohen 1997). For instance, a selective
attention Navon task with extremely short stimuli produced
a local advantage in autism (Mottron and Belleville 1993),
when a global advantage appears with longer stimuli
(Plaisted et al. 1999). Thus very brief stimuli might be
insufficient to support global processing in autism.
Alternatively, it might be difficult in launch events to
shift attention rapidly from shape A to the interaction, so as
to not miss the defining moment of contact. Individualswith autism are often slower at disengaging attention
(Wainwright-Sharp and Bryson 1993; Allen and Cour-
chesne 2001) and shifting attention between and within
modalities (Courchesne et al. 1994; Townsend et al. 1996;
Allen and Courchesne 2001). These attentional difficulties
would also predict that children with autism might have
more difficulties with launch than reaction events.
For a test of these views, Ray and Schlottmann (2007)
suggested an entraining event, in which shape A contacts
B, and pushes it forward for a while. This is an example of
physical causality involving a longer causal interaction
(Michotte 1946/1963), which should eliminate a slow
processing difficulty in autism. In contrast, a cueing stim-
ulus at the point of, but prior to contact, should help chil-
dren shift attention. The present study takes up both
suggestions.
The Present Study
In sum, the present study considered PC in autism using
Ray and Schlottmanns (2007) picture choice method (see
Fig. 2) to minimize memory and verbal demands and to
avoid problems with verbal descriptions as in Thommen
et al. (1998). However, the present instructions are similar
to those used by Schlottmann et al. (2002) with typically
developing children, rather than the rudimentary 1- and
2-word instructions developed by Ray and Schlottmann
(2007), which may have reduced task understanding.
Of course, our more articulated instructions required
children with autism to function at a higher verbal level
(9.6 VMA versus 5.1 in Ray and Schlottmann 2007), and
this also meant that our sample has a higher chronological
age (13.0 versus 8.4). This should not affect a launch deficit
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due to slow global processing, which persists into adult-
hood (Mottron and Belleville 1993). However, it might
improve launch performance if the deficit reflects atten-
tional problems, as these may decrease with age (Allen and
Courchesne 2001).
The test included the 8 launch, reaction and delayed
control events used by Ray and Schlottmann (2007), plus 6
new events. An entraining event (Fig. 3a), with prolonged
contact of the shapes, was added to test the slow-processing
hypothesis. In a cued launch event to test the attentional
shift hypothesis, shape B flashed on and off while A moved
towards it (Fig. 3b). This might help individuals with
autism cope with a possibly slower disengage/move com-
ponent of attention (Wainwright-Sharp and Bryson 1993;
Wainwright and Bryson 1996).
Finally, we showed children an ambiguous event
(Fig. 3c), with simultaneous motion at a distance, as in a
reaction event, followed by contact, as in launching, to testfor any preference for a physical or social interpretation.
Young children with typical development take this event to
show physical causality (Watts et al. 2007). If children with
autism have a launch perception deficit they should not
show this pattern.
Events were shown with rigid motion and with a
rhythmic, non-rigid motion (Fig. 4). This did not sys-
tematically affect causal attributions in Ray and Schlott-
mann (2007), but this non-effect might have been a
casualty of the generally depressed performance in that
study. Michottes (1963) caterpillar stimulus appears
animate to adults and children (Schlottmann et al. 2002;
Schlottmann et al. 2006; Schlottmann and Ray 2004) and
children with autism have well-documented difficulties
with processing biological motion (e.g., Blake et al.
2003). Accordingly, it seemed important to re-consider
the perception of this artificial form of biological motion
in a more sensitive paradigm. The relation between per-
ception of animacy and causality is reconsidered in thediscussion.
Fig. 2 Choice pictures: A boy pushes a cart, corresponding to
physical causality; a boy stands still while a girl walks away,
corresponding to independent movement; a boy runs after a girl who
runs away, corresponding to social causality. None of the pictures
represents contact in order to avoid simple contact matching
responses
Fig. 3 a Entraining event: In entraining, shape A moves towards B
and makes contact with it, as in launching, but upon contact the two
shapes continue moving together (as if A pushes B) until A stops. The
interaction between A and B lasts exactly as long as in the reaction
event (about 680 ms). b Cued launch event: A approaches B, and
after 1428 ms B flashes on and off for 425 ms, ceasing 187 ms prior
to impact. The total duration of the approach phase thus is 1983 ms,
exactly as in the non-cued launch event. c Ambiguous event: This
shows in effect a reaction followed by a launch. First A moves
towards B, with B beginning to move prior to contact, as in the
reaction event. However, A moves twice as fast as B and catches up
with it. Upon contact with B, A stops, while B continues to move as in
the launch event
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Method
Participants
Forty-one children participated in the study, 19 children
with high-functioning autism and 22 children with typical
development matched for verbal mental age. Children with
autism were tested during their regular appointment at the
Child Neuropsychiatry Unit of the Hospital in Siena (17)
and in LAquila (2), children with typical development
attended a primary school in Quartu S.E. (CA). Children
with autism were diagnosed according to DSM-IV
(APAssociation 1994) criteria by expert professionals as
measured by the ADOS, module 3, rating of 79 (Lord
et al. 1999). The ADOS and a cognitive evaluation with the
WISC-R (Wechsler 1986; the version still used in Italy)
were administered in separate sessions by hospital staff, or
the IQ scores were already in the clinical records of the
children. Chronological ages and psychometric data are in
Table 1.
Design
The events included all 8 stimuli from Ray and Schlottmann
(2007), i.e., launch and reaction events, and their delayed
non-causal equivalents with and without contact, all with
both rigid and non-rigid agents, in a 2 (presence/absence of
contact) 9 2 (presence/absence of delay) 9 2 (rigid/non-
rigid motion) factorial design. The 6 new events consisted
of ambiguous reaction ? launch events and of entraining
events with both rigid and non-rigid agents, as well as cued
launch and reaction events (Fig. 3). The latter were shown
only with rigid motion, since the flash cue seemed to
interfere with perception of the non-rigid motion.
The 14 animations were presented in two sets of 8 and 6
each, separated by a brief pause. The stimuli in the first set
involved rigidly moving shapes, while the second set had
non-rigid motion. Events within each set were presented in
a different random order for each child, except that the two
cued events were always presented at the end of the set, (to
avoid that the cue interfered with the task). As a measure of
perceptual causality, for each event children chose which
of three pictures in Fig. 2 corresponded best to each movie.
As a measure of perceptual animacy we asked children to
describe the non-rigid motion stimuli on initial encounter.
Subsequently, we gave hints to consider an animate inter-
pretation of the stimuli, to amplify any potential animacy
effects on childrens subsequent causal attributions.
Materials
The stimuli were 2D animations realised with Macromedia
Director Software (MX. 2004, Macromedia inc. S.Fran-
cisco California), integrated in a graphic interface and
shown on a portable PC (Toshiba Satellite M-30 853) on a
TFT 20 9 35 cm screen with a resolution of 1280 9 800
pixels. Each movie lasted 480 frames (2 pixel/frame at 60
f/s, about 8 s) and repeated continuously for the duration of
a trial with a pause (1 s) at the end of each cycle during
which the normally white screen turned gray.
Each animation involved 2 squares, (60 9 60 pixels,
1.5 9 1.5 cm), initially stationary, blue on the left and red
Fig. 4 Caterpillar stimulus (Michotte 1946/1963): A square expands towards the right, with the left edge stationary, then contracts, with the
right edge stationary. The resultant translation appears animate
Table 1 Participant characteristics
Group Chronological age Verbal mental age Verbal IQ Performance IQ Full scale IQ
Autism (n = 19)
Mean 13.0 9.6 74.26 79.63 75.21
Range 8.218.7 5.815.9 45111 45120 40110
SD 2.9 3.0 21.79 23.97 23.42
Typical Dev. (n = 22)
Mean 9.5 124.77
Range 8.109.10 97143
SD 0.3 12.474
Note: Ages presented in years months format
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in the middle of the screen. The shapes always moved from
left to right. In all events, shapes A and B moved 120
frames each, covering a distance of 6 cm each.
The animations were presented in two versions. In the
first set, the squares moved rigidly at a constant speed of
about 2 pixels/frame (about 3 cm/s), except for the
ambiguous event. In the second set, they moved non-rig-
idly, expanding and contracting with the same averagetranslation speed. With the left edge stationary, the non-
rigid square expanded horizontally for 20 frames at a rate
of 4 pixels/frame (about 6 cm/s) to a rectangle of 60 9 140
pixels (1.5 9 3.5 cm). Then it contracted at the same speed
with the right edge stationary until the original shape was
recovered. These steps repeated three times during each
shapes motion.
The two sets involved corresponding events with iden-
tical temporal and spatial configuration (except for the cued
stimuli which only involved rigid motion). In some movies
B moved only after contact with A: In launching with and
without attentional cue, A stopped upon contact with B. Bbegan to move after 1 frame (about 17 ms). In cued
launching, B began to flash off and on after A had moved
84 frames (about 1.4 s). It flashed for 25 frames (425 ms),
stopping 11 frames (about 187 ms) prior to contact. In
entraining, A moved up to B, then continued forward,
pushing B for 40 frames (about 680 ms) before stopping. In
delayed launching A moved up to B, and B started moving
after 120 frames contact (about 2 s).
In some events B moved without contact: In the reaction
event with and without cue, A moved for 80 frames, then B
began to move as well, with 100 pixels (about 2.5 cm)
separation between shapes. Both shapes moved simulta-
neously for 40 frames (about 680 ms) before A stopped,
and B continued to move for another 80 frames (about
1.360 s). In the delayed reaction A moved close to B (20
pixels, about .5 cm separation), and B started moving after
120 frames (about 2 s) contact. In the cued reaction,
flashing began with the movement of B and lasted 25
frames (425 ms) as in the launch event. Finally, in the
ambiguous event, A moved at the standard speed, while B
moved at half speed of 1 pixel/frame (1.5 cm/s). A moved
for 80 frames, then B began to move as well, with 40
frames simultaneous motion at a distance, as in the stan-
dard reaction event. At the end of this period, A had caught
up with B, stopping upon contact, as in the standard launch
event. B then moved alone for another 80 frames. To
equate cycle length between events with different temporal
configurations, stationary periods at the beginning and end
of each cycle were adjusted.
Children chose from three (14 9 21 cm) pictures of a
boy pushing a cart (physical causality), chasing a girl
(social causality) or standing with a girl walking by
(independent, non-causal motion). Two additional movies
and pictures were used only for practice. In the apart
movie A and B appeared side by side in the middle of the
screen, then moved rigidly towards opposite directions. In
the climb movie the two squares were in their usual posi-
tion, then A climbed over B. The corresponding pictures
showed a boy and a girl back-to-back, walking away from
one another, and a boy climbing over a fence.
Procedure
The procedure used was similar to that used by Ray and
Schlottmann (2007) with two main differences: In the
present study more verbal instructions were provided, and
children were prompted about animacy for the second set
of non-rigid stimuli.
Children were tested individually in a quiet room, in a
session of 2030 min. During training, children were fa-
miliarised with the pictures and the picture-matching pro-
cedure. Children were initially asked to describe the
pictures, the Experimenter (E.) listened to the child, gaveprompts and verbally reinforced correct answers, or pro-
vided an adequate description in order to avoid misinter-
pretations. For the training pictures, E. said the boy is
climbing over, he goes up and then down and the chil-
dren are walking in two opposite directions, one is going
this way and the other is going that way, while pointing to
appropriate parts of each picture. For the experimental
pictures E said the boy is pushing the cart, or the boy is
standing while the girl is walking away, or the boy is
chasing after the girl, she escapes. The familiarisation
with the pictures was usually rehearsed twice, with E
asking the child to describe each picture, providing the
correct interpretation as needed and asking again to check
that the child understood and recalled.
Then the apart and climb movies were used to explain
that the task required to match pictures and movies. After a
few repetitions of the climbing movie E. asked the child:
Did you see the two squares moving? Does it look like
one of these pictures? Which one? The same was done
with the apart movie. After the training, both training
drawings were removed.
At the beginning of the test, E. told the child that he/she
would see the shapes moving and should choose an image
for each movie just like before. After the child saw each
animation, E. asked two general questions what happens in
the movie? and what do the squares do? and the child
chose a picture. If the child hesitated, E. asked if the movie
was similar to one of the pictures. Each stimulus repeated
until the child gave an answer, typically 24 times.
The second set involving the non-rigid movies was
presented after a 25 min break. Before starting the first
movie to the child, E. said This will be different from what
you have seen before. After the child had watched the
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animation E. asked What do the red and the blue look
like? and What could they be? If the child identified the
shapes as caterpillars, worms, snakes, slugs or
similar, E. said good, its true, you are right, or, if the
child didnt answer or answered rectangles or similar, E.
said yes, but they could also seem worms, or snakes, dont
you think? Then all children who needed explicit
prompting were told to watch again, and the procedure wasrepeated. Following this, children were asked about the
causality of the movie, in the manner outlined above, then
the next movie was shown.
Childrens picture choices were recorded by E. and, for
all but 4 children, also by a second observer blind to the
stimulus shown. Observers agreed in 99% of the cases. In
case of disagreement, the blind observers response was
taken for the analysis. In 4 instances, children spontane-
ously picked 2 pictures, so two answers were recorded.
Results
Causal Perception
Childrens causal choices are in Fig. 5. The data for rigid
events (top panels) show that both children with autism and
controls identified the various events appropriately, mostly
choosing the physical collision picture (light gray bar on
left) for launch events with and without cue and for
entraining events. They mostly chose the social, chase
picture (dark bar in the middle) for reaction events with and
without cue. Delayed events were mostly seen as non-
causal (mid gray bar on right).
No weakness on either launch or reaction events wasapparent for children with autism. The only notable dif-
ference in perception of the rigid motions between children
with autism and controls appears for the ambiguous event,
showing a reaction followed by a collision: children with
autism saw this largely as physical, while controls showed
a split pattern.
Both children with autism and controls gave somewhat
more social attributions to non-rigid events, as apparent in
the extended dark bars in the bottom panels of Fig. 5. For
some events, this tendency appears slightly more pro-
nounced in the autism group. Children with autism and
normal controls still tended to attribute physical causalityto launch, social causality to reaction stimuli and non-
causality to delayed events with non-rigid as with rigid
agents, but responses to entraining and ambiguous events
with non-rigid agents are now split for both groups of
children.
Fig. 5 Proportion of picture choices (%) for each of 14 events listed
to the left of the data; autism left panel, control right, rigid-motion
top, non-rigid motion bottom, light gray physical causality, dark gray
social causality, mid gray non causal. On the left are listed the mean
causal scores for each event, as used in the ANOVA. A score close to
1 indicates prevalence of physical causality choices, a score close to 0
indicates prevalence of non causal choices or mixed responses, a
negative score indicates prevalence of social causality choices
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For the statistical analysis, following Schlottmann et al.
(2002), physical responses were coded as 1, social as -1,
and non-causal as 0. (If children chose 2 pictures, the
average score was used). These causal scores are also listed
in Fig. 5, on the right in each panel, showing positive
scores for launch events, i.e., physical attributions, negative
scores for reaction events, i.e., social attributions, and
generally low scores around 0 for delayed control eventswith and without contact. This reflects the causal-non-
causal distinction and the domain distinction within the
causal events that were already evident in the raw choice
data.
Because children were matched on mental age, but
differed in VIQ, we initially assessed whether this variable
related to performance on the 14 events. However, only
one of 14 across-group correlations was significant, such
that higher VIQ was linked to a stronger tendency to
attribute social causality to ambiguous events involving
rigid motion, r = -.354, p = .023. This was due to the
control children, r = -.450, p = .036, with r = .054 forchildren with autism. For the control children, but not
children with autism, higher VIQ was also associated with
a tendency to attribute social causality to non-rigid reaction
events, r = -.471, p = .027, The correlation between VIQ
and a composite score across all 14 events reached
r = .034 overall, with r = .071 and .005 for children with
autism and controls, respectively. Thus, VIQ was not
associated with childrens causal scores, either within or
across groups.1 As would be expected therefore, ANCOVA
on the childrens mean causal scores for either the 8 events
of the main design, as considered just below, or for all 14
events, with groups as between subjects factor and VIQ as
a covariate (Winer et al. 1991) found no effects, all F\ 1,
so VIQ was not considered further.
For our main analysis, a 2 group (autism, control) 9 2
spatial configuration (contact, non-contact), 9 2 temporal
configuration (delay, no delay) 9 2 type of motion (rigid,
non-rigid) mixed model factorial ANOVA was conducted
on the 8 stimuli previously used by Ray and Schlottmann
(2007).2 The spatial configuration main effect tests for
whether children distinguish between physical and social
causality. If children also distinguish between causal and
non-causal events, we additionally expect a spatial 9 tem-
poral configuration interaction, to reflect that the domain
distinction should appear for events without delay, while
delayed events should all be treated as non-causal. The
temporal main effect itself should be 0, with positive and
negative means for contact and non-contact events can-
celling each other, and the delay mean should be 0 as well.
The domain and causal-noncausal distinctions were
reflected in a main effect for the spatial configuration,
F(1,39) = 95.89, MSe = 0.49, p\ 0.001, and a spatial 9
temporal configuration interaction, F(1,39) = 69.88,
MSe = 0.44, p\0.001, as predicted. In addition, there wasan effect for type of motion, F(1,39) = 7.04, MSe = 0.48,
p = 0.01, with less positive/more negative scores, i.e., more
social attributions, to non-rigid motion. Finally, there was a
marginal main effect for the temporal configuration,
F(1,39) = 3.75, MSe = 0.25, p = 0.06, and for the tem-
poral configuration 9 group interaction F(1,39) = 2.9,
MSe = 0.25, p = 0.09. These effects were largely due to
children with typical development having slightly negative
rather than 0 scores for causal, slightly positive rather than 0
scores for delayed events. There were no other effects, in
particular, there were no significant group differences
between children with autism and the control group, allremaining F\ 1.
Analyses of the two cued events showed that they were
not treated differently from the equivalent events without
cue. There were also no group differences, with the largest
effect involving either factor reaching F(1,39) = 0.63. The
only significant effect in the 2 group 9 2 cue 9 2 spatial
configuration ANOVA was the spatial configuration main
effect, F(1,39) = 118.74, MSe = 0.65, p\ 0.001, con-
firming again the clear distinction between launch and
reaction events.
Analysis of the entraining event showed that this was
treated as more physical than the reaction event (which had
an identical amount of simultaneous motion, but no con-
tact). This was reflected in the main effect of event,
F(1,39) = 19.02, MSe = 0.545, p\ 0.001, in the 2
group 9 2 event 9 2 type of motion ANOVA. In addition,
there was an effect for type of motion, F(1,39) = 99.29,
MSe = 0.48, p =\ 0.001, with non-rigid entraining
events appearing less physical. All other effects, including
those involving group, were non-significant, with the
largest reaching F(1,39) = 2.38.
When entraining was compared to launching (which
also had contact, but no simultaneous motion), the 2
group 9 2 type of motion 9 2 event ANOVA, found main
effects for event, F(1,39) = 7.97, MSe = 0.43, p = 0.007,
and for type of motion F(1,39) = 12.46, MSe = 0.63,
p = 0.001. Although the interaction is marginal,
F(1,39) = 3.61, p = 0.06, it is evident from the scores that
both groups of children treated launching and entraining as
equally physical when the shapes moved rigidly, but
entraining appeared distinctly less physical than launching
when they moved non-rigidly. All other effects were non-
significant, F\1. Again, there were no group differences.
1The same results obtained for correlations between VIQ and
childrens accuracy, with only 3 of 45 correlations within and across
groups significant.2
ANOVA on categorical data is appropriate if proportions are not
extreme (e.g., Lunney 1970; Rosenthal and Rosnow 1984).
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The ambiguous events (involving a reaction followed by
a launch), received neutral scores close to 0 for the control
children, both with rigid and non-rigid motion. If the shapes
moved non-rigidly, the same appeared for children with
autism, but they gave distinctly more physical attributions
when the shapes moved rigidly. The corresponding
group 9 type of motion interaction was marginal,
F(1,39) = 3.26, MSe = 0.75, p = 0.07. All other effects inthe 2 group 9 2 type of motion ANOVA were non-signif-
icant. The physical interpretation given by children with
autism also appeared for younger typically developing
children in a prior study (Watts et al. 2007) while the neutral
score is closer to the pattern found for normal adults.
Individual response patterns confirm that children were
not guessing. In the autism group, 14 of 19 children per-
formed above chance, as did 17 of 22 control children (9 or
more correct in 14; binomial test, p = 0.017), and these
children made on average 2.92 and 2.88 errors only. Thus
individual and group performance corresponds.
Childrens deviations from the correct pattern typicallyinvolved errors on both causal and non-causal events, while
previous work had found that childrens errors were largely
restricted to non-causal events, with children over-attrib-
uting causality to these (Schlottmann et al. 2002). The
discrepancy, however, is largely an artefact of the event
selection here: 10 of 14 events were causal, so the likeli-
hood of errors on these was higher than on non-causal
events. Although less than 30% of stimuli were non-causal,
almost 40% of errors appeared for these events, rising to
67% for children with autism and to 72% for those in the
control group, if only children performing above chance
are considered. The same appears from Table 2, which
shows individual response patterns for the 8 main stimuli,
i.e., for a balanced event sample with half causal, half non-
causal stimuli. Nevertheless, about two-thirds of the errors
occurred for non-causal events, in agreement with previous
work. Thus children over-attributed causality in the present
study as well. No differences appeared in this between
children with autism and control children.
Overall, our results demonstrate intact perception ofcausality in children with autism, at both the group and
individual level. Performance was substantially better than
in Ray and Schlottmann (2007), with 70% correct choices
for children with autism, and 67% for normal controls,
across launch, reaction and delayed events, compared to
43% in the earlier study for children with autism, 44 and
55% for two control groups. Most importantly, in contrast
to Ray and Schlottmann (2007), children with autism had
no weakness on launch events in the present study, or on
various novel events that shared some features of
launching.
Animacy Perception
While causality perception was unimpaired, animacy per-
ception was impaired in the autism group. When first asked
what A and B looked like, only 37% of the children with
autism described the non-rigid agents as caterpillars,
snakes, slugs (see Table 3) while 42% described them
as inanimate, and 21% gave no answer. This contrasts with
77% animate and 23% inanimate descriptions for the
control children. After being told explicitly that the shapes
could be animate agents, all of the control children and
68% of children with autism described them as animate,
Table 2 Number of children with different response patterns (% in brackets) and total number of errors made by these children
Response patterns Autism group Control group
Number of
children (%)
Number of errors Number of
children (%)
Number of errors
On non causal
events
On causal
events
On non causal
events
On causal
events
Above chance level
performance
All correct 2 (11) 3 (14)
Errors on non-causal
events only
6 (31) 11 7 (31) 14
Errors on non-causal and
causal events
2 (11) 5 3 6 (27) 8 6
Errors on causal events
only
4 (21) 5 1 (5) 2
Chance level
performance
5 (26) 13 9 5 (23) 11 11
Total 19 29 (63%) 17 (37%) 22 33 (63%) 19 (37%)
Note: All correct refers to push responses for launch events, chase responses for reaction events, and non-causal responses to all delayed
events, regardless of whether the shape moved rigidly or non-rigidly. For comparability across studies, this Table2 considers only the 8 events
also used by Ray and Schlottmann (2007), Schlottmann et al. (2002) and Schlottmann et al. (2006)
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11% still gave no answer and 21% still described them as
inanimate.
For the statistical analysis inanimate or no descriptions
were coded as 0, animate descriptions as 1. The less frequent
occurrence of animate descriptions in children with autismwas reflected in a main effect of group, F(1,39) = 12.26,
MSe = 0.21, p = 0.001, in a 2 group 9 2 prompt ANOVA
on the animacy scores. The increased occurrence of animate
descriptions after prompting was reflected in the main effect
of prompt, F(1,39) = 14.71, MSe = 0.10, p\ 0.001. The
interaction was non-significant, F\ 1, i.e., both groups
improved to the same extent. These results were confirmed
non-parametrically, with significant group differences both
prior to and after prompting (Mann-Whitney U = 124.5,
p = 0.01, and U = 143, p = 0.005, respectively).
The overall correlation between VIQ and performance
was r = .341, p = .029, and although it did not reachsignificance for either group of children alone, we recom-
puted the analysis with VIQ as covariate and group as
between subjects factor. The group effect remained sig-
nificant, F(1,38) = 5.59, MSE = .110, p = .024, with
F\ 1 for the covariate. The same appeared when only the
prompted descriptions were considered, with F(1,38) =
6.87, MSE = .013, p = .013 for group, and F\ 1 for
the covariate. When only the spontaneous descrip-
tions were considered, however, neither VIQ, F\ 1, nor
group, F(1,38) = 2.34, MSE = .218, p = .135 reached
significance.
In sum, children with autism had difficulties in identi-
fying animal-like motion relative to control children. It
appears that these group differences, in part, but notcompletely, reflect VIQ differences between children with
and without autism.
Discussion
In this study, high-functioning children with autism (mean
VMA 9.7 years) perceived physical and social causal
Gestalts as well as matched children with typical devel-
opment, but had difficulty recognizing animacy in Michotte
(1946/1963) caterpillar stimulus. Both groups of children
responded in a mature fashion on the causality task, usingtemporal information to distinguish causal from non-causal
events and spatial information to differentiate physical
from social causality. Overall good performance indicates
that children did not have problems with the test itself, and
confirms that understanding of the pictures, movies and
procedure was adequate. Accordingly, the present animacy
deficit would seem to reflect more than just generally low
intellectual or verbal functioning in autism, despite some
remaining unclarity of interpretation, discussed below.
Table 3 Descriptions of non-
rigid agents before and after
prompting; animate responses in
bold
Control group Autism group
Before prompting/after prompting
1. Elastics, caterpillars
2. Caterpillars
3. Stripes/Caterpillars, snakes
4. Rectangles/Kangarooscaterpillars
5. Legs of a rabbit/Worms
6. Snake
7. Slugs
8. Snake
9. Rectangles/Snakes
10. They jump and expand/Caterpillars
11. It expands and contracts/Caterpillar, slug
12. Caterpillars
13. They runfrogs/Snakes
14. Worms
15. They runthey jumpsnakes
16. They run, caterpillars
17. Worms
18. Slugs
19. Snakes
20. Caterpillars
21. Accordion, running puma/Slug
22. Slugs
Before prompting/after prompting
1. Rectangles/Rectangles
2. Snakes
3. Rectangles/Snakes
4. Rectangles/Snakes
5. /Caterpillars
6. Snakes
7. Rectangles/Snakes
8. Snakes
9. Slugs
10. Snakes
11. Rectangles/Rectangles
12. Rectangles/Rectangles
13. Worms
14. Worms or snakes
15. Rectangles/Rectangles
16. Rectangles/Caterpillars
17. /
18. /
19. /Snakes
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Launch Perception
Unimpaired perception of launch events in the present
study is in contrast to Ray and Schlottmanns (2007)
finding that children with autism performed at chance
level for launching. These authors argued that their
launch deficit could reflect a local processing bias
emerging with very brief visual information (Mottronand Belleville 1993), but in the present study, children
with autism had no difficulties with launching or other
stimuli representing physical interactions (entraining,
cued launching), and they preferred the physical inter-
pretation for an ambiguous event, like younger normal
children in Watts et al. (2007) study. The children here
clearly had a good grasp of physical causality in all its
manifestations.
Two factors could account for the difference in results,
the more elaborate verbal instructions or higher age of the
children here (9.6 VMA, 13.0 CA versus 5.1 VMA and 8.4
CA in the earlier study). That the language of theinstructions is in part responsible is suggested by the low
overall performance even for control children in Ray and
Schlottmann (2007); in the present study, performance was
higher and closer to that in Schlottmann et al. (2002). It
would thus seem that the 1- or 2-word language in Ray and
Schlottmann (2007) obscured the meaning of the task
somewhat. While some argue that perceptual causality is a
hardwired automatic reaction of the perceptual system
(Scholl and Tremoulet 2000), its measurement draws on
more cognitive processes (Schlottmann 2000) even in tasks
with low verbal demands. Note that the two VMA matched
groups here were both at a verbal level sufficient to cope
with the instructions, while the otherwise perceptual task
meant that beyond this there was no relationand there
should not be anybetween individual differences in PC
and VIQ, i.e., in verbal learning ability (rather than func-
tioning) of the children.
This account does not, of course, explain the specific
improvement found here for launch events. However,
launch perception might be even more verbally mediated
than reaction perception with the present method because
the picture for physical causality showed no contact
between the agents, to avoid matching based on spatial
contiguity rather than causality. This means, that physical
causality has to be recognised from a picture that does not
give a prototypical view of a collision, which might be
difficult for low functioning children with autism.
Although children with autism understand collisions in
picture sequences, with each image scaffolded by other
images (Baron Cohen et al. 1986), or in the present study
with the image scaffolded linguistically, in Ray and Sch-
lottmann (2007), a single atypical image had to be read
without such aids.
Alternatively, the specific improvement on launching
found here might be due to children with autism over-
coming an early impairment with brief stimuli as they grow
older. It is unlikely, however, that this is linked to a
developmental shift towards global processing of such
stimuli: A local processing bias in general (Happe and Frith
2006 for review), and of very brief stimuli in particular
(Mottron and Belleville 1993), has been reported at allages. Indeed, results for the Block design subtest of the
WISC-R, a measure of local processing, were available for
8 children in the present sample with autism, and a high
mean score of 10.88 (range 915), accompanied the global
causal perception.
Instead, the specific improvement in launching found
here relative to Ray and Schlottmann (2007) could be related
to developmental improvements in attention (Townsend
et al. 1996; Allen and Courchesne 2001). Attentional pro-
cesses in young children with autism might be described as
obligatory, with difficulties in voluntary disengagement,
as in infants (Stechler and Latz 1966; Hood et al. 1998).Young children with autism show slow attention shifting and
have problems in disengaging attention from one of two
competing stimuli (Landry and Bryson 2004). Slow atten-
tional orienting is a distinct deficit in autism at all ages, but
more pronounced in children (Harris et al. 1999), which
could explain why younger children with autism in Ray and
Schlottmann (2007), but not our older children, had prob-
lems with launch perception. The present study included
events designed to test the attentional account of weak
launch perception. Since children had no difficulty with
these events, they might be useful in future tests with
younger samples. Work with eye tracking methods might
also be useful to illuminate attentional processes in PC.
Reaction Perception
The finding that children with autism are not impaired in
reaction perception confirmed previous studies (Bowler
and Thommen 2000; Ray and Schlottmann 2007), but with
a test more sensitive to any potential deficit. This lack of
impairment contrasts with their difficulties in everyday
social interactions and social descriptions of more complex
animations (Klin 2000; Bowler and Thommen 2000).
This contrast suggests that perception of causality at a
distance is not directly related to social or mental state
reasoning found for more complex animations. This may
be because perception of reaction causality does not require
mental state attribution. Even normal adults often describe
reaction events with goal-directed rather than mental state
language (Schlottmann et al. 2006), but children with
autism use goal-directed language also to describe com-
plex animations that normal subjects describe in mental
state terms (Abell et al. 2000; Castelli et al. 2002).
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Neuroimaging studies also suggest differences in social
perception of complex and simple animations, with the
medial prefrontal cortex activated in studies of the former
(Castelli et al. 2002) but not the latter (Blakemore et al.
2003; Blakemore et al. 2001). Simple causal interactions
may directly relate to immediate, visible goals, with clear
meaning for children with autism, as suggested by work
on imitation of simple goal-directed actions on objects(Vivanti et al. 2008), and on perception of schematic
interactions involving geometrical shapes (Abell et al.
2000; Castelli et al. 2002; Klin 2000). But similar inter-
actions embedded in complex sequences may relate to
higher order social goals, requiring processes of social and
mental state attribution not directly accessible to people
with autism.
Unimpaired reaction perception would not seem to fit
with the idea that perception of causality might support
developing social/mental state understanding. However,
late proficiency does not rule out delayed emergence: If
children with autism lack reaction perception during earlyinfancy this might still contribute to later social deficits. To
evaluate this possibility would require testing of younger
children with autism, children even younger than in Ray
and Schlottmann (2007) to check for very early anomalies
in reaction perception.
Animacy Perception
A second aspect of social perception in our study was the
perception of animacy. Many have treated the perception
of animacy and of social causality or intentionality and
goal-directedness as more or less equivalent (e.g., Scholl
and Tremoulet 2000; Rutherford et al. 2006), however, one
concerns the nature of the agents, the other the interpre-
tation of the events in which they engage. From knowledge
about the event one might infer the identity of the agents,
and conversely, the identity of the agents gives clues as to
the type of event they likely engage in, but nevertheless,
agent identification and event interpretation are not con-
ceptually identical and can, as in this study, appear
empirically distinct (see the current debate on how infants
understand the social world, e.g., Biro and Leslie 2007;
Gergely and Csibra 2003; Luo and Baillargeon 2005).
Perception of animacy from pattern of motion is usually
studied with point-light stimuli (Johansson 1973), but can
emerge also in artificial schematic displays, as originally
suggested by (Michotte 1946/1963; also see Scholl and
Tremoulet 2000). In our study, children with autism were
impaired in the identification of Michottes caterpillar as
animate. This fits with previous work showing behavioural
impairments and differences in neural processing of point-
light biological motion in autism (Blake et al. 2003; Freitag
et al. 2007; Herrington et al. 2007; Klin et al. 2003; Klin
and Jones 2008). One possible explanation is that this
deficit might be related to atypical global processing (Da-
kin and Frith 2005; Pellicano et al. 2005). The present data
would seem to also suggest an impairment for the sche-
matic motion of geometric shapes, as studied here. This
artificial form of biological motion may not appear eco-
logically valid, but adults (Schlottmann et al. 2006), and
typically developing children from 3 years (Schlottmannet al. 2002) have strong impressions of animacy for these
stimuli. Moreover, infants as young as 6 months already
treat the motion of such caterpillars towards one of two
goals as animate (Schlottmann and Ray 2009). Further
studies would seem warranted on the perception of both
naturalistic and artificial biological motion in autism.
The animacy deficit found here may be in part a per-
ceptual deficit and in part a verbal learning deficit. Our
animacy task was more verbal than our causality task, it
correlated with VIQ, and VIQ differences accounted in part
for the group differences in spontaneous, though not
prompted animacy responses. Children with autism andcontrol children were at a matched level of verbal func-
tioning (VMA) but differed in CA and in VIQ relative to
CA age norms, i.e., children with autism had learning
difficulties and slower rate of intellectual development
(Jarrold and Brock 2004). We thus have to allow for the
possibility that, despite equivalent level of verbal func-
tioning, these verbal learning difficulties per se might make
it more difficult for children with autism to find an
appropriate verbal description for the unfamiliar non-rigid
stimuli presented here and to refrain from an overly literal
interpretation of the question (what do the red and blue
look like?like rectangles). Nevertheless, the group dif-
ference in animacy perception remained even after
prompting, and VIQ did not affect this at all, so the ani-
macy deficit clearly goes beyond a difficulty with learning
to describe novel visual stimuli.
While children with autism found it more difficult than
controls to perceive the non-rigid stimuli as animate,
prompting increased their socially causal attributions as
much as for control children. Similarly, in Rutherford et al.
(2006) children with autism, when taught to distinguish
animate from inanimate shapes based on motion cues
suggesting internal versus external energy sources even-
tually performed at the same level as control children, but
took significantly longer to learn. Both findings fit either
with the view that children with autism orient less towards
social information, even if they can process this informa-
tion (Dawson et al. 1998), or that they engage in strategic
compensation to make up for deficient perception. The
strategic compensation view is perhaps more plausible here
than in Rutherford et al.s (2006) study, because our
sample was older and because we provided verbal prompts
and verbal feedback about the correct interpretation.
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Children might have found it easier to access the impli-
cations of animacy for the causal interpretation from the
verbal information rather than from the visual displays.
All in all, differences appeared between spontaneous
and prompted animacy perceptions, and between animacy
perceptions and perception of social causality involving
these animates, all pertaining to the same animated stimuli
and measured in the same children. These differenceshighlight that social perception is not a unitary process.
Our findings point to a need for finer grained conceptual
analysis of which aspects of social perception might be
impaired in autism, to go hand in hand with process
analysis.
Conclusions
In the present study children with high-functioning autism
showed unimpaired perception of causality of launch,
reaction and related events. This confirms previous findings
of intact reaction perception (Ray and Schlottmann 2007)and suggests that the launch deficit that appears for
younger children with autism (Ray and Schlottmann 2007)
can be overcome with age or more articulated verbal
instructions. This does not rule out a link between PC and
autism, but this will need to be explored in much younger
children. This also does not rule out lingering deficits in
older children, if a more complex task drawing on PC is
used. However, the more complex the task, the more dif-
ficult it becomes to separate the contributions of PC proper
from those of the ancillary skills involved in expressing
this causality and reasoning about it.
The present study also found that children with autism
were impaired in recognizing the animacy of artificial
animal motion. This finding extends previous work show-
ing that children with autism have problems with biological
motion processing. When told how to interpret the motion
pattern, children with autism could nevertheless understand
the implication of this motion for causality attributions as
well as normal controls. This strengthens our above view
that causality perception per se is unimpaired. It also
suggests that high-functioning children with autism, might
be able to compensate for any problems of animacy per-
ception, or of orienting towards such stimuli, at a more
strategic level.
Our findings could have implications for intervention.
Animations are usually attractive for children with autism
and can be used for simplified representation of interac-
tions between agents. This could be a way to provide rel-
evant social information to them while avoiding some of
the aversive features of realistic social stimulation. The
present results suggest, however, that careful attention is
needed to the type of social information provided through
animation, as deficits may extend into this domain. The
development of perceptual causality and animacy in autism
is a fascinating topic for study, because it has the potential
to illuminate the involvement of some basic processes of
social perception in this disorder. Conversely, what we
may learn from children with autism may help us better
understand these basic processes.
Acknowledgments This paper is based on SCs doctoral disserta-tion submitted to the University of Siena. SC was supported by a
doctoral fellowship of Regione Sardegna and by the University of
Siena, AS and ER were supported by ESRC grant R000230198. Many
thanks to the children and parents involved, in particular to Giacomo
Vivanti for his comments and his help in testing children with autism,
to the staff at the Neuropsychiatry Unit at the Hospital in Siena, and
LAquila, to the staff at the Quartu S.E. primary school, and to Luca
Surian for discussion.
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