Video game reveals how people with autism process information
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Researchers at Boston University created a video game, Geode, to study how people with autism perceive and interpret information, aiming to include individuals across the spectrum of symptom severity.
Benjamin Scott and his colleagues designed the game to measure how players learn and make decisions while hunting for gems, tracking their ability to spot flashes of light that indicate hidden treasures.
The study involved over 300 adolescents, including more than 200 with autism, and revealed that autistic individuals struggled more with integrating multiple pieces of sensory evidence than their neurotypical peers. The researchers discovered a potential cause for perceptual differences in autistic people, a phenomenon called “noisy evidence integration,” where the brain has difficulty processing a large amount of sensory information. This difficulty appears to stem from an imbalance in neural circuits, leading to distorted or noisy perception.
Helen Tager-Flusberg noted the game’s success in including a broader range of participants, including those with profound autism or genetic syndromes, something often lacking in previous research. Scott believes the game could be valuable for clinical trials, serving as a way to measure the effects of drugs and therapies on perceptual skills.
He also hopes it will facilitate comparisons between human and animal studies of autism, as the game’s simple, instruction-free format can be used with both species to study shared genetic and brain circuitry. The team continues to explore potential research questions inspired by the participants themselves, such as understanding skill regression in autistic individuals.
