Atypical Multisensory Integration and the Temporal Binding Window in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

The present study examined the relationship between multisensory integration and the temporal binding window (TBW) for multisensory processing in adults with Autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The ASD group was less likely than the typically developing group to perceive an illusory flash induced by multisensory integration during a sound-induced flash illusion (SIFI) task. Although both groups showed comparable TBWs during the multisensory temporal order judgment task, correlation analyses and Bayes factors provided moderate evidence that the reduced SIFI susceptibility was associated with the narrow TBW in the ASD group. These results suggest that the individuals with ASD exhibited atypical multisensory integration and that individual differences in the efficacy of this process might be affected by the temporal processing of multisensory information.

Multisensory Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorders

“…Similarly, we found that the stronger the ASD characteristics in the general population, the higher the temporal resolution and the lower the likelihood that MSI will occur (18). We also conducted the same experiment in individuals with highfunctioning ASD and reported a similar trend (19), which suggested that MSI is affected by more fundamental information processing characteristics. Therefore, interventions targeting lower-order functions may also improve higher-order functions.…”

“…Some have reported that people with ASD and TD show equal susceptibility to the SIFI task (8,16,17). In contrast, others have shown that individuals with ASD have reduced (14,19) or enhanced (15) susceptibility to the SIFI task. Such inconsistencies may be attributed to a developmental delay rather than a persistent difference (23).…”

“…Although children with ASD show reduced susceptibility to this illusion relative to TD controls ( 14), adults with ASD appear to be equally susceptible to the illusion as controls (8,16,17). Moreover, when age is controlled for, both adolescents and adults with ASD show lower sensitivity to the SIFI task (19,18). These findings suggest that the development of MSI is delayed in individuals with ASD.…”

Audiovisual Temporal Processing in Children and Adolescents With Schizophrenia and Children and Adolescents With Autism: Evidence From Simultaneity-Judgment Tasks and Eye-Tracking Data

“…However, it remains unclear whether a smaller audiovisual TBW would benefit or impair perceptual processing. For example, several studies have found that people having a smaller TBW showed decreased multisensory integration (e.g., reduced susceptibility for sound-induced flash illusion; Kawakami, Uono, Otsuka, Yoshimura, et al, 2020; Kawakami, Uono, Otsuka, Zhao, & Toichi, 2020) because integration could occur only within a narrower time window for them. Moreover, in healthy individuals, a narrower TBW was associated with more self-reported autistic traits, including both social difficulties (Kawakami, Uono, Otsuka, Zhao, & Toichi, 2020; Yaguchi & Hidaka, 2018) and attention to detail (van Laarhoven et al, 2019).…”

Cortical signatures of auditory object binding in children with autism spectrum disorder are anomalous in concordance with behavior and diagnosis

“…For both visual and auditory processing, temporal coherence across assemblies of neurons that code for different stimulus features is thought to promote binding of those features into coherent perceptual objects [3,4]. A leading hypothesis about sensory processing abnormalities in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is that this kind of temporal "synthesis" of sensory information is atypical [5][6][7][8]. This hypothesis stems from behavioral data indicating that individuals with ASD often show impaired processing of dynamic stimuli, such as the coherent motion of visual dots [9].…”