Audiovisual Processing in Children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorders

• Published in: Journal of autism and developmental disorders Vol. 38; no. 7; pp. 1349 - 1358
• Main Authors: Mongillo, Elizabeth A., Irwin, Julia R., Whalen, D. H., Klaiman, Cheryl, Carter, Alice S., Schultz, Robert T.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston Springer US 01.08.2008; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Adolescent; Attention; Audiovisual information processing; Auditory Perception; Autism; Autism Spectrum Disorders; Autistic children; Autistic Disorder - diagnosis; Autistic Disorder - psychology; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Biological and medical sciences; Child; Child and School Psychology; Child clinical studies; Children; Comparative studies; Comprehension; Concept Formation; Developmental disorders; Face; Female; Humans; Infantile autism; Interpersonal Competence; Listening Comprehension; Male; Medical sciences; Mental Age; Neurosciences; Original Paper; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Pediatrics; Pervasive Developmental Disorders; Phonetics; Phonology; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Public Health; Reading Ability; Reading Skills; Resistance (Psychology); Speech; Speech Perception; Stimuli; Syllables; Visual Perception; Visual Stimuli; Young Children; Audiovisual processing; Visual influence; McGurk effect; Human; Cognition; Developmental disorder; Audiovisual; Autism; Pervasive developmental disorder; Language; Vision; Perception; Speech; Intermodal perception; Child; Comparative study
• ISSN: 0162-3257; 1573-3432
• DOI: 10.1007/s10803-007-0521-y

Fifteen children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and twenty-one children without ASD completed six perceptual tasks designed to characterize the nature of the audiovisual processing difficulties experienced by children with ASD. Children with ASD scored significantly lower than children without ASD on audiovisual tasks involving human faces and voices, but scored similarly to children without ASD on audiovisual tasks involving nonhuman stimuli (bouncing balls). Results suggest that children with ASD may use visual information for speech differently from children without ASD. Exploratory results support an inverse association between audiovisual speech processing capacities and social impairment in children with ASD.