Temporal preparation in adults with autistic spectrum disorder: The variable foreperiod effect

Abstract

Research suggested the possibility that temporal cognition may be different in autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). Although there are some empirical studies examining timing ability in these individuals, to our knowledge, no one directly assessed the ability to predict when an event will occur. Here, we report a study on implicit temporal preparation in individuals with ASD as indexed by the variable foreperiod (FP) effect. We compared a group of adult ASD participants to a group of typically-developed (TD) controls, for their respective abilities to utilize implicit temporal information in a simple detection task with three different preparatory intervals (FP, short, middle and long). Participants were given a warning tone to signal an imminent stimulus, and asked to press a key as quickly as they could upon detection of the stimulus. Both groups were able to use implicit temporal information, as revealed by both the variable-FP effect (i.e., faster response for targets appearing after a long FP) and asymmetric sequential effects (i.e., slower response in short-FP trials following a previous long-FP trial). The TD group exhibited a faster response in a long-FP trial that was preceded by short-FP one, whereas the ASD group did not, as reflected in their higher percentage of response omissions for a target that appeared later than in the previous trial. The reduced ability of ASD participants to modulate their responses under these conditions might reflect a difficulty in time-based monitoring of stimulus occurrence. Lay SummaryTime-processing may be different in autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). This study addressed the ability to anticipate a relevant stimulus's onset according to predictable interstimulus intervals comparing adults with ASD and typically developed controls. We found that ASD participants did not benefit from temporal preparation when stimulus appeared later than previously attended. This suggests a reduced ability in detecting implicit temporal regularities between events.

Rhythmic and interval‐based temporal orienting in autism

“…Various timing processes have been studied in autism (Allman, 2015;Casassus et al, 2019), but only a few have looked at time-based event expectancy. One recent study investigated "variable foreperiod effects": this study found that when participants were asked to respond quickly to a target that follows a cue with a variable foreperiod, autistic participants' reaction times were less affected by the foreperiod of the previous trial than those of nonautistic participants, indicating a possible difference in implicit temporal orienting (Girardi et al, 2021). A further pair of studies with autistic children used a task in which participants rapidly discriminated between two targets that could be partially predicted by the foreperiod preceding their appearance (Kunchulia et al, 2017(Kunchulia et al, , 2020.…”