These three tasks were developed for research which aimed to compare autistic and non-autistic participants in their ability to detect changes in distance between pairs of people and objects. In one of the tasks, participants were tasked with detecting changes in interpersonal distance between pairs of dancers. In another task, participants were tasked with detecting changes in interpersonal distance between pairs of boxers. In the last task, participants were tasked with detecting changes in distance between pairs of grandfather clocks.
Trials begin with a grey fixation cross (500 ms) which is followed by the sequential presentation of two dyadic stimuli (750 ms each). A visual mask is presented in the inter-stimulus interval (1000 ms) to prevent an afterimage. The first image always depicts an interpersonal distance of ~180 cm. On signal absent trials (50% of total trials), the same image is presented in the second stimulus interval. On signal present trials (other 50% of trials), a different image is presented: the actors appear closer together (~155 cm) or further apart (~205 cm). Participants are asked to judge whether the distance between the actors changed between the two intervals. Binary decisions are recorded via keypress (left and right arrow keys). Each task comprises 120 trials in total. The different trial types are interleaved and stimulus order is randomized.
The stimulus sets used in the tasks were derived from stock images obtained from www.shutterstock.com
These tasks are described in detail in: Bunce, C., Gehdu, B., Press, C., Gray, K.L.H., & Cook, R. (2023). Autistic adults exhibit typical sensitivity to changes in interpersonal distance. Open Science Framework. https://osf.io/u54bk/ [PRE-PRINT]
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Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY)
Built with Task Builder 1
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