Within- and Cross-Modal Integration and Attention in the Autism Spectrum.

Although impairment in sensory integration is suggested in the autism spectrum (AS), empirical evidences remain equivocal. We assessed the integration of low-level visual and tactile information within and across modalities in AS and typically developing (TD) individuals. TD individuals demonstrated...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Autism & Developmental Disorders Vol. 50; no. 1; pp. 87 - 101
Main Authors: Charbonneau, Geneviève, Bertone, Armando, Véronneau, Marie, Girard, Simon, Pelland, Maxime, Mottron, Laurent, Lepore, Franco, Collignon, Olivier
Format: research tables/charts Journal Article
Published: Springer Nature Jan2020
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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Summary:Although impairment in sensory integration is suggested in the autism spectrum (AS), empirical evidences remain equivocal. We assessed the integration of low-level visual and tactile information within and across modalities in AS and typically developing (TD) individuals. TD individuals demonstrated increased redundancy gain for cross-modal relative to double tactile or visual stimulation, while AS individuals showed similar redundancy gain between cross-modal and double tactile conditions. We further observed that violation of the race model inequality for cross-modal conditions was observed over a wider proportion of the reaction times distribution in TD than AS individuals. Importantly, the reduced cross-modal integration in AS individuals was not related to atypical attentional shift between modalities. We conclude that AS individuals displays selective decrease of cross-modal integration of low-level information.