Within- and Cross-Modal Integration and Attention in the Autism Spectrum.

Abstract

Although impairment in sensory integration is suggested in the autism spectrum (AS), empirical evidences remain equivocal. We assessed the integration of low-level visual and tactile information within and across modalities in AS and typically developing (TD) individuals. TD individualsdemonstrated increased redundancy gain for cross-modal relative to double tactile or visual stimulation, while AS individualsshowed similar redundancy gain between cross-modal and double tactile conditions. We further observed that violation of the race model inequality for cross-modal conditions was observed over a wider proportion of the reaction times distribution in TD than ASindividuals. Importantly, the reduced cross-modal integration in AS individualswas not related to atypical attentional shift between modalities. We conclude that AS individualsdisplays selective decrease of cross-modal integration of low-level information.