Abstract
Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition defined by differences in social communication and by the presence of restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, and activities (RRBs). Individuals with autism also commonly present with atypical patterns of sensory responsiveness (i.e., hyporesponsiveness, hyperresponsiveness, and sensory seeking), which are theorized to produce cascading effects across other domains of development. The purpose of this study was to examine differences in sensory responsiveness in children with and without autism (ages 8–18 years), as well as relations between patterns of sensory responsiveness and core and related features of autism. Participants were 50 children with autism and 50 non-autistic peers matched on age and sex. A comprehensive clinical battery included multiple measures of sensory responsiveness, core features of autism, adaptive behavior, internalizing behaviors, cognitive ability, and language ability. Groups significantly differed on all three patterns of sensory responsiveness. Some indices of core and related autism features were robustly associated with all three patterns of sensory responsiveness (e.g., RRBs), while others were more strongly associated with discrete patterns of sensory responsiveness (i.e., internalizing problem behaviors and hyperresponsiveness, language and sensory seeking). This study extends prior work to show that differences in sensory responsiveness that are linked with core and related features of autism persist in older children and adolescents on the spectrum.
Highlights
Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition that has conventionally been defined by differences in social communication and by the presence of restrictive and repetitive patterns of behaviors, interests, Brain Sci. 2020, 10, 775; doi:10.3390/brainsci10110775 www.mdpi.com/journal/brainsciBrain Sci. 2020, 10, 775 and activities (RRBs) [1]
Sensory hyperresponsiveness was most strongly associated with internalizing problem behaviors in this sample
This study evaluated sensory responsiveness and its relation to clinical features in older children and adolescents with autism
Summary
Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition that has conventionally been defined by differences in social communication and by the presence of restrictive and repetitive patterns of behaviors, interests, Brain Sci. 2020, 10, 775; doi:10.3390/brainsci10110775 www.mdpi.com/journal/brainsciBrain Sci. 2020, 10, 775 and activities (RRBs) [1]. Three patterns of sensory responsiveness are commonly described in the literature: hyperresponsiveness, or exaggerated responding to sensory stimuli; hyporesponsiveness, or reduced responding to sensory stimuli; and sensory seeking, or craving of certain sensory stimuli [4,5,6,7]. These classifications may be distinct, they are not mutually exclusive or restricted to one sensory modality; individuals can and do present with varied combinations of alterations across patterns of sensory responsiveness and sensory modalities, e.g., [3,8]. Atypical patterns of sensory responsiveness, for example, have been linked to the core features of RRBs [6,11,12,13,14,15] and social communication in persons on the autism spectrum [12,16,17,18,19,20,21]
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