Autistic traits in the neurotypical population do not predict increased response conservativeness in perceptual decision making

Recent research has shown that adults and children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have a more conservative decision criterion in perceptual decision making compared to neurotypical (NT) individuals, meaning that autistic participants prioritise accuracy over speed of a decision. Here, we test whether autistic traits in the NT population correlate with increased response conservativeness. We employed three different tasks; for two tasks we recruited participants from China (N=39) and for one task from the UK (N=37). Our results show that autistic traits in the NT population do not predict variation in response criterion. We also failed to replicate previous work showing a relationship between autistic traits and sensitivity to coherent motion and static orientation. Following the argument proposed by Gregory and Plaisted-Grant (2016), we discuss why perceptual differences between autistic and NT participants do not necessarily predict perceptual differences between NT participants with high and low autistic traits.