Abstract
The language difficulties often seen in individuals with autism might stem from an inability to integrate audiovisual information, a skill important for language development. We investigated whether 9-month-old siblings of older children with autism, who are at an increased risk of developing autism, are able to integrate audiovisual speech cues. We used an eye-tracker to record where infants looked when shown a screen displaying two faces of the same model, where one face is articulating/ba/and the other/ga/, with one face congruent with the syllable sound being presented simultaneously, the other face incongruent. This method was successful in showing that infants at low risk can integrate audiovisual speech: they looked for the same amount of time at the mouths in both the fusible visual/ga/− audio/ba/and the congruent visual/ba/− audio/ba/displays, indicating that the auditory and visual streams fuse into a McGurk-type of syllabic percept in the incongruent condition. It also showed that low-risk infants could perceive a mismatch between auditory and visual cues: they looked longer at the mouth in the mismatched, non-fusible visual/ba/− audio/ga/display compared with the congruent visual/ga/− audio/ga/display, demonstrating that they perceive an uncommon, and therefore interesting, speech-like percept when looking at the incongruent mouth (repeated ANOVA: displays x fusion/mismatch conditions interaction: F(1,16) = 17.153, p = 0.001). The looking behaviour of high-risk infants did not differ according to the type of display, suggesting difficulties in matching auditory and visual information (repeated ANOVA, displays x conditions interaction: F(1,25) = 0.09, p = 0.767), in contrast to low-risk infants (repeated ANOVA: displays x conditions x low/high-risk groups interaction: F(1,41) = 4.466, p = 0.041). In some cases this reduced ability might lead to the poor communication skills characteristic of autism.
Highlights
Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder typically diagnosed from around 3 years of age, which is characterized by impaired communication and social skills and repetitive or stereotypical behaviours [1]
An electrophysiological study showed that the influence of visual speech cues on the auditory processing of language is reduced in adolescents with autism, and that the strength of this influence correlates with their social communication skills [8]
A two-way repeated ANOVA was used in the low-risk infant group to investigate whether time spent looking at the mouth in the congruent face was different to time looking at the mouth in the incongruent face and whether this effect depends on the type of incongruency, i.e. whether the AV speech cues are fusible or not
Summary
Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder typically diagnosed from around 3 years of age, which is characterized by impaired communication and social skills and repetitive or stereotypical behaviours [1]. An electrophysiological study showed that the influence of visual speech cues on the auditory processing of language is reduced in adolescents with autism, and that the strength of this influence correlates with their social communication skills [8]. The Broader Autism Phenotype (BAP) refers to clinical, behavioural and brain characteristics associated with autism found in affected individuals, and in their relatives [14] It is not known whether reduced ability to integrate audiovisual (AV) information is a feature of an early form of the BAP, and/or whether it is involved in the emergence of language difficulties in children with autism. The group of high-risk infants had the same looking behaviours in both the mismatch and fusion conditions, reflecting an absence or weakened AV integration and reduced ability to detect incongruence in AV cues
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