New lab paper in Molecular Autism!

Our new paper, led by Nazia Jassim and Bronagh McCoy and published in Molecular Autism, takes on a long-standing question about how autistic and non-autistic people perceive structure in the world. The study, which was pre-registered and included nearly 500 participants, used a clever “Tetris-style” task to test whether people automatically combine fragmented visual pieces into coherent wholes. This so-called “Tetris effect” captures the brain’s natural drive for perceptual cohesion—our tendency to see patterns and complete shapes even when information is incomplete.

Remarkably, we show that autistic and non-autistic adults share this same implicit drive. Both groups were just as likely to “see” completed shapes when fragments could plausibly fit together, suggesting that the fundamental mechanisms that bind perception into meaning are shared rather than distinct.

It’s a beautifully executed, pre-registered study; large, rigorous, and conceptually elegant. Congratulations to Nazia and Bronagh

for a paper that reframes how we think about perception in autism, emphasising commonality rather than difference.