Method Article

Testing Sensory and Multisensory Function in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

DOI:

10.3791/52677

April 22nd, 2015

In This Article

Summary

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We describe how to implement a battery of behavioral tasks to examine the processing and integration of sensory stimuli in children with ASD. The goal is to characterize individual differences in temporal processing of simple auditory and visual stimuli and relate these to higher order perceptual skills like speech perception.

Abstract

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In addition to impairments in social communication and the presence of restricted interests and repetitive behaviors, deficits in sensory processing are now recognized as a core symptom in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Our ability to perceive and interact with the external world is rooted in sensory processing. For example, listening to a conversation entails processing the auditory cues coming from the speaker (speech content, prosody, syntax) as well as the associated visual information (facial expressions, gestures). Collectively, the “integration” of these multisensory (i.e., combined audiovisual) pieces of information results in better comprehension. Such multisensory integration has been shown to be strongly dependent upon the temporal relationship of the paired stimuli. Thus, stimuli that occur in close temporal proximity are highly likely to result in behavioral and perceptual benefits – gains believed to be reflective of the perceptual system's judgment of the likelihood that these two stimuli came from the same source. Changes in this temporal integration are expected to strongly alter perceptual processes, and are likely to diminish the ability to accurately perceive and interact with our world. Here, a battery of tasks designed to characterize various aspects of sensory and multisensory temporal processing in children with ASD is described. In addition to its utility in autism, this battery has great potential for characterizing changes in sensory function in other clinical populations, as well as being used to examine changes in these processes across the lifespan.

Introduction

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Traditional neuroscience research has often approached understanding sensory perception by focusing on the individual sensory modalities. However, the environment consists of a wide array of sensory inputs that are integrated into a unified perceptual view of the world in a seemingly effortless manner. The fact that we exist in such a rich multisensory environment requires that we better understand the way in which the brain combines information across the different sensory systems. The need for this understanding is further amplified by the fact that the presence of multiple pieces of sensory information often results in substantial improvements in behavior and perce....

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Protocol

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Ethics statement: All subjects must provide informed consent prior to the experiment. The research described here has been approved by the Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Institutional Review Board.

1. Experiment Set Up

  1. Ask the participants to complete the tasks in a dimly lit, sound controlled room.
    NOTE: Consider implementing a visual schedule29,30 as part of the study design. Although each task in this battery is relatively short, performing several tasks in a row can cause fatigue in some children, both with typical development (TD) and with ASD. A visual schedule should includ....

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Results

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This task battery has proven very successful in measuring individual differences in temporal processing in individuals with and without ASD17,18,23,27. For the SJ task, plot the resulting data from each individual subject by first calculating the proportion of responses at each SOA that subject responded “synchronous” and then fitting the resulting response curve with a Gaussian curve. As illustrated in Figure 1A, there is a window of time in which visual-auditory stimuli pairs can be presente.......

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Discussion

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The manuscript describes elements of a psychophysical task battery that are used to assess temporal processing and acuity in sensory and multisensory systems research. The battery has wide applicability for a number of populations and has been used by our laboratory in order to characterize audiovisual temporal performance in typical adults18, children10,39, and in children and adults with autism17,23. In addition, it has been used to examine how various facets of the battery relate to on.......

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Disclosures

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The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests.

Acknowledgements

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This research was supported by NIH R21CA183492, the Simons Foundation, the Wallace Research Foundation, and by CTSA award UL1TR000445 from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.

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Materials

List of materials used in this article
NameCompanyCatalog NumberComments
Oscilloscope
Photovoltaic cell
Microphone
Noise-cancelling headphones
Chin rest
Audiometer

References

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  1. Calvert, G. A., Spence, C., Stein, B. E. Handbook of Multisensory Processes. , MIT Press. (2004).
  2. Stein, B. E., Meredith, M. A. The Merging of the Senses. , 224(1993).
  3. King, A. J., Calvert, G. A. Multisensory integration: perceptual grouping by eye and ear. Curr Biol. 11 (8), R322-R325 (2001).
  4. ....

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Tags

Sensory ProcessingMultisensory IntegrationTemporal ProcessingAutism Spectrum DisorderPsychophysical TestingSimultaneity JudgmentTemporal Order JudgmentMcGurk EffectTemporal Binding WindowAudiovisual Stimuli

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