Abstract
Children with autism show alterations in multisensory integration that have been theoretically and empirically linked with the core and related features of autism. It is unclear, however, to what extent multisensory integration maps onto features of autism within children with and without autism. This study, thus, evaluates relations between audiovisual integration and core and related autism features across children with and without autism. Thirty-six children reported perceptions of the McGurk illusion during a psychophysical task. Parents reported on participants’ autistic features. Increased report of illusory percepts tended to covary with reduced autistic features and greater communication skill. Some relations, though, were moderated by group. This work suggests that associations between multisensory integration and higher-order skills are present, but in some instances vary according to diagnostic group.
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Funding
The work described was supported by NIH U54 HD083211 (PI: Neul), NIH/NCATS KL2TR000446 (PI: Woynaroski), NIH/NIDCD R21 DC016144 (PI: Woynaroski), and NSF NRT Grant DGE 19-22697 (PI: Wallace).
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JIF, MTW, and TGW posed the research questions and collected data. DMS developed the stimuli and analytic tools. JIF, WK, AT, JGC, and YL scored, entered, and organized the data. TGW and JIF analyzed the data, interpreted the results, and drafted the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Feldman, J.I., Conrad, J.G., Kuang, W. et al. Relations Between the McGurk Effect, Social and Communication Skill, and Autistic Features in Children with and without Autism. J Autism Dev Disord 52, 1920–1928 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-021-05074-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-021-05074-w