No differences between adults with and without autism in audiovisual synchrony perception

Ricarda F Weiland, Tinca Jc Polderman, Dirk Ja Smit, Sander Begeer, Erik Van der Burg

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

LAY ABSTRACT: It has been known for a long time that individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder perceive the world differently. In this study, we investigated how people with or without autism perceive visual and auditory information. We know that an auditory and a visual stimulus do not have to be perfectly synchronous for us to perceive them as synchronous: first, when the two are within a certain time window (temporal binding window), the brain will tell us that they are synchronous. Second, the brain can also adapt quickly to audiovisual asynchronies (rapid recalibration). Although previous studies have shown that people with autism spectrum disorder have different temporal binding windows, and less rapid recalibration, we did not find these differences in our study. However, we did find that both processes develop over age, and since previous studies tested only young people (children, adolescents, and young adults), and we tested adults from 18 to 55 years, this might explain the different findings. In the end, there might be quite a complex story, where people with and without autism spectrum disorder perceive the world differently, even dependent on how old they are.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)927-937
Number of pages11
JournalAutism : the international journal of research and practice
Volume27
Issue number4
Early online date7 Sept 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - May 2023

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