No Evidence for Deficits in the Multisensory Integration of Self-Generated Movement in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Background: Previous studies have reported atypical neurophysiological and perceptual processing of auditory, tactile, and visual stimulation in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).  Auditory-visual and auditory-somatosensory temporal binding deficits have also been demonstrated in ASD.  However, no research has explored the ability of children with ASD to integrate temporally asynchronous visual-proprioceptive feedback.

Objectives: To examine the multisensory integration of self-generated movement in children with ASD.  

Methods: Seventeen children with ASD between 7 and 11 years of age and 20 typically developing children matched for age, verbal IQ and performance IQ manipulated a joystick with their right hand.  Children in both groups were only able to see their joystick movements via a computer monitor which displayed real time video captures of their movements in a live or delayed format.  During familiarization, the live and delayed (3 seconds) video captures were explained to the children as happening now or happening later.  In the subsequent pre-test phase, the video captures were randomly switched between the live and 3 second delayed presentation and children were asked whether the video captures were happening now (live) or later (delayed).  The order of presentation was semi-randomized, so that each participant received one of two possible orders.  To establish that each child understood the difference between live and delayed video captures, a criterion of 5 consecutive correct answers had to be met in order for the experiment to continue to the test phase.  In the test phase, children were again asked to judge whether the video captures were happening now (live) or later (delayed); however, delay durations were reduced to 0 ms, 100 ms, 200 ms, and 300 ms.  Trials were also semi-randomized, so that each participant received one of two possible orders.  

Results: Across diagnostic groups, children made more delay judgments as a function of increasing delay duration, F(3, 33) = 63.4, p < .001, η_p² = 0.644.  However, performance on the task did not differ significantly between diagnostic groups, F(3, 33) = .213, p = .887, η_p² = 0.006, suggesting that children with ASD integrated visual-proprioceptive feedback as effectively as the typically developing children.

Conclusions: Our current findings provide evidence that children with ASD effectively integrate asynchronous visual and proprioceptive feedback.  This raises the questions of whether previously reported multisensory temporal binding deficits in ASD generalize to visual-proprioception and whether visual-proprioceptive integration may be enhanced at the expense of multisensory integration of other modalities in ASD.