Off-campus University of Richmond users: To download campus access theses, please use the following link to log in to our proxy server with your university username and password.

Date of Award

2026

Document Type

Restricted Thesis: Campus only access

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Dr. Arryn Robbins

Abstract

he present study examined whether holistic face processing differs between individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and neurotypical (NT) individuals, and whether such differences are modulated by stimulus duration. Across three experiments, participants completed composite face tasks (Experiments 1A and 1B) and a face inversion task (Experiment 2), with stimulus duration manipulated at encoding. Experiment 1A, which employed a partial composite design, did not yield a standard composite effect. However, after designing a complete composite task, Experiment 1B revealed evidence of holistic interference. Experiment 2 exhibited inversion effects, with inverted faces producing slower and less accurate responses than upright faces. ASD and NT participants showed comparable effects of holistic processing, although ASD participants exhibited reduced inversion effects in response times. Contrary to predictions, stimulus duration did not produce a clear shift from holistic to feature-based processing in ASD. Instead, results suggest that holistic processing is present in both groups but may be more context-dependent in ASD.

Download

Share

COinS