An autistic-like profile of attention and perception in synaesthesia

Abstract

Synaesthesia and autism are two neurodevelopmental conditions that have been shown to co-occur more than expected by chance. The studies reported here test the hypothesis that increased sensory sensitivity and enhanced Attention-to-detail are core cognitive features that are shared between them. In Study 1, we administer self-report measures of sensory sensitivity and autistic traits (the Autism Spectrum Quotient, AQ) to a large heterogeneous sample of synaesthetes. Both sensory sensitivity and the Attention-to-detail subscale of the AQ show a "dose-like" relationship with synaesthesia: namely, more kinds of synaesthesia is related to a greater shift up the autistic spectrum. Study 2 uses two objective measures of visual perception/attention linked to autistic traits: Change Blindness and detection of local embedded figures. Both measures are shown here to be sensitive to the Attention-to-detail subscale of the AQ, and synaesthetes outperformed controls on both tasks. Synaesthetes appear to occupy a specific cognitive niche of having autistic-like traits linked to enhanced perception and attention. Whilst these typically occur in the absence of the traditional impairments that define autism, they may carry the cost of increased vulnerability to clinical levels of autism (Odds Ratio = 2.07).

Colors of Autism Spectrum: A Single Paradigm Explains the Heterogeneity in Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…Hughes et al (2017) found that synesthesia in autism is linked to savant skills. These results are further supported by Ward et al (2017), who found that synesthetes have enhanced perception and attention and exhibit autistic-like impairments, too. It has been found that axonal connections between V4, which is involved in color processing, and the so-called 'grapheme area' are denser in synesthetes than in controls (Rouw and Scholte, 2007).…”

Creativity and involvement in art in different types of synaesthesia

“…(), who found a correlation between convergent verbal creativity and the amount of multiple types of synaesthesia and with Ward et al . (). The finding that sound‐colour synaesthetes are specifically more involved in art, but do not score significantly higher in divergent creativity, is also in line with Ward, Thompson‐Lake et al .…”

“…(), Ward, Hovard, Jones, and Rothen () and Ward et al . () who found differences in cognitive performance and cognitive style for different types of synaesthesia.…”

“…Sequence‐space synaesthetes have shown higher performance in visual and visuo‐spatial tasks of perception and working memory (Kozhevnikov et al ., ; Simner, Mayo, & Spiller, ). A mixed group of different types of synaesthesia have shown higher accuracy in detecting embedded figures (Ward, Brown, Sherwood, & Simner, ). Synaesthetes with multiple types of synaesthesia such as both grapheme‐colour‐and‐sound‐colour synaesthesia have shown more vivid imagery (Meier & Rothen, 2013a; Shindell, ).…”

Autistic traits in synaesthesia: atypical sensory sensitivity and enhanced perception of details

“…An important hypothesis states that synaesthesia and autism share atypical sensory sensitivity and altered sensory perception [6,7]. In autism research, increased attention to sensory abnormalities (e.g.…”