Audiovisual multisensory integration in individuals with autism spectrum disorder: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

An ever-growing literature has aimed to determine how individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) differ from their typically developing (TD) peers on measures of multisensory integration (MSI) and to ascertain the degree to which differences in MSI are associated with the broad range of symptoms associated with ASD. Findings, however, have been highly variable across the studies carried out to date. The present work systematically reviews and quantitatively synthesizes the large literature on audiovisual MSI in individuals with ASD to evaluate the cumulative evidence for (a) group differences between individuals with ASD and TD peers, (b) correlations between MSI and autism symptoms in individuals with ASD and (c) study level factors that may moderate findings (i.e., explain differential effects) observed across studies. To identify eligible studies, a comprehensive search strategy was employed using the ProQuest search engine, PubMed database, forwards and backwards citation searches, direct author contact, and hand-searching of select conference proceedings. A significant between-group difference in MSI was evident in the literature, with individuals with ASD demonstrating worse audiovisual integration on average across studies compared to TD controls. This effect was moderated by mean participant age, such that between-group differences were more pronounced in younger samples. The mean correlation between MSI and autism and related symptomatology was also significant, indicating that increased audiovisual integration in individuals with ASD is associated with better language/communication abilities and/or reduced autism symptom severity in the extant literature. This effect was moderated by whether the stimuli were linguistic versus non-linguistic in nature, such that correlation magnitudes tended to be significantly greater when linguistic stimuli were utilized in the measure of MSI. Limitations and future directions for primary and meta-analytic research are discussed.

Anomalous Perception of Biological Motion in Autism: A Conceptual Review and Meta-Analysis

“…Our results suggest that a candidate core mechanism playing a role in BM processing anomalies in ASD is linked to the temporal properties of moving dots embedded in a PLD. This is consistent with several experimental pieces of evidence and theoretical proposals suggesting that one of the core anomaly of individuals with ASD is related to temporal binding of uni-and -multi-sensory information (Brock, Brown, Boucher, & Rippon, 2002;Feldman et al, 2018;Wallace & Stevenson, 2014;Zhou et al, 2018), with accumulating evidence showing that this would be a common endophenotype also for other neurodevelopmental disabilities (Wallace & Stevenson, 2014;Zhou et al, 2018). Specifically, individuals with ASD have repeatedly shown an extended temporal binding window (TBW; an epoch of time within which stimuli from different sensory modalities are highly likely to be bound) which would bring to an imprecise temporal processing of sensory stimuli (Zhou et al, 2018).…”

Processing of Real‐World, Dynamic Natural Stimuli in Autism is Linked to Corticobasal Function

“…These findings suggest that when processing this real‐world, dynamic stimulus, high‐functioning individuals with ASD were similar to controls in auditory and visual sensory cortical brain areas, as well as in subcortical brain regions (pulvinar and SC) generally reported to integrate auditory and visual information. The lack of a group difference in extracted BOLD values in the present study was not inconsistent with a recent meta‐analysis in that AV integration differences between those with ASD and controls was greater when using linguistic stimuli than with nonlinguistic stimuli [Feldman et al, ], which was explicitly avoided in the present study.…”

“…Prior research has demonstrated that individuals with ASD differ from controls when integrating different modalities of sensory inputs for nonnatural stimuli such as basic shapes and pure tones [de Boer‐Schellekens, Keetels, Eussen, & Vroomen, ; Foss‐Feig et al, ] as well as complex natural stimuli such as speech [Megnin et al, ; Stevenson et al, ; Thye et al, ] or static real‐world images [Russo et al, ]. However, these temporal differences can vary depending on the complexity of the stimuli [Feldman et al, ; Noel, De Niear, Stevenson, Alais, & Wallace, ; Stevenson & Wallace, ]. Some studies have investigated multisensory processing in ASD using real‐world, dynamic stimuli: For instance, studies using dynamic stimuli have varied in the duration of stimuli presentation and task demands, including short video clips of a few seconds followed immediately by a forced‐alternative choice task selection [Stevenson et al, ], live images followed by a forced‐alternative choice task [Greenfield et al, ], or passive movie watching with no task [Gabrielsen et al, ; Russo et al, ].…”

Audio–visual and olfactory–visual integration in healthy participants and subjects with autism spectrum disorder

“…Thus, there is evidence in ASD (especially in children with ASD) of impaired processing of complex information as opposed to unaffected processing of simple information (Bertone, Mottron, Jelenic, & Faubert, 2003;Bertone, Mottron, Jelenic, & Faubert, 2005). This conclusion, however, is challenged by a recent meta-analysis, which suggests, summarizing studies on a variety of audio-visual MSI tasks in ASD, that differences between patients and typically developing individuals increasingly balance out with age (Feldman et al, 2018).…”