The Relationship Between Color Preference And Chromatic Discrimination In Autism Spectrum Disorder

Specificity on chromatic perception and cognition exists in children with autism spectrum disorder(ASD). In order to understand the influencing factors of color perception in ASD, the current investigation chose abstract colors as the stimulus materials and assessed two experiments(color preference; chromatic discrimination) in children with ASD and typically developing(TD) children matched on age and sex in order to discuss the relationship between color preference and chromatic discrimination in ASD. The study revealed that:(1) Difference exists between ASD and TD in color preference, the former’s order of color preference is red, green, blue, yellow, cyan, purple and orange, while the latter’s order of color preference is cyan, blue, green, yellow, red, purple and orange;(2) The sensitivity of chromatic difference is found to be reduced in ASD, which reflects in that the scores on both three levels of the task in chromatic discrimination in ASD is significant lower than in TD, and this difference will be more and more obvious when the difficulty is the task goes down;(3) The achievement of chromatic discrimination task on other five color regions improves as the grade of color preference on corresponding color regions goes down except for yellow and blue in TD, whilst the achievement of chromatic discrimination task on other six color regions improves as the grade of color preference on corresponding color regions goes down except for red in ASD. Combining previous studies, the current investigation put forward to a hypotheses below:(1) Individuals’ ability of chromatic discrimination are influenced by both their physiological conditions and the grade of color preference. Thereinto, color preference has an identical effect in ASD and TD on the ability of chromatic discrimination, which reflects in low ability on the color regions they like and high ability on the color regions they dislike. While the effect of the biological factor to the ability of chromatic discrimination gives expression to physiological specificity in ASD. What makes best achievement on red region in ASD is probably because excessive red sensitive cone cells on fovea centralis. And what makes lower achievement on yellow and blue regions in TD is probably because insufficient blue sensitive cone cells on fovea centralis.(2) There is a general deficit in chromatic discrimination on different color regions in ASD who do not have color obsessions or phobias. When one’s preference to certain color regions in ASD develops into color obsessions or phobias, this general deficit becomes a selective one, which reflects in very low ability on color regions they obsess and extremely high ability on color regions they abominate which even exceed children in TD.