The cascading influence of multisensory processing on speech perception in autism

Abstract

It has been recently theorized that atypical sensory processing in autism relates to difficulties in social communication. Through a series of tasks concurrently assessing multisensory temporal processes, multisensory integration and speech perception in 76 children with and without autism, we provide the first behavioral evidence of such a link. Temporal processing abilities in children with autism contributed to impairments in speech perception. This relationship was significantly mediated by their abilities to integrate social information across auditory and visual modalities. These data describe the cascading impact of sensory abilities in autism, whereby temporal processing impacts multisensory information of social information, which, in turn, contributes to deficits in speech perception. These relationships were found to be specific to autism, specific to multisensory but not unisensory integration, and specific to the processing of social information.