Students with autism spectrum disorders may have difficulty processing sights and sounds simultaneously, according to a new study in the January issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.
Vanderbilt University researchers compared 32 typically developing students ages 6 to 18 with 32 high-functioning children with autism who had been matched by IQ and other background characteristics. As the students worked through a series of computer-based tasks, researchers tested their responses to simple and complex flashes, beeps, speech, and environmental actions, such as a hammer hitting a nail. They found students with autism had more trouble connecting sights and sounds that happened together.
“It is like they are watching a foreign movie that was badly dubbed; the auditory and visual signals do not match in their brains,” said co-author Stephen Camarata, a Vanderbilt professor of hearing and speech sciences, in a statement.
