Sensory issues are highly prevalent in autism and previous findings support a relationship between questionnaires of sensitivity and autistic symptoms and traits, whereas studies that examine this relationship through behavioural assessments of sensitivity are less consistent. The current study explores these differences and suggests that…

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) reportedly possess preserved or superior music-processing skills compared to their typically developing counterparts. We examined auditory imagery and earworms (tunes that get "stuck" in the head) in adults with ASD and controls. Both groups completed a short earworm questionnaire together…

Prosody or "melody in speech" in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is often perceived as atypical. This study examined perception and production of statements and questions in 84 children, adolescents and adults with and without ASD, as well as participants' pitch direction discrimination thresholds. The results suggested that the abilities…

Auditory sensory over-responsivity (aSOR) is a frequently reported sensory feature of autism spectrum disorders (ASD); however, there is little consensus regarding its prevalence and severity. This cross-sectional study uses secondary data from the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R; Item 72: "undue sensitivity to noise") housed…

We tested the ability to recognise speech-in-noise and its relation to the ability to discriminate vocal pitch in adults with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developed adults (matched pairwise on age, sex, and IQ). Typically developed individuals understood speech in higher noise levels as compared to the ASD group.…

The perception of subsecond durations in adults with autism spectrum disorder (hereafter 'autism'; n = 25 Experiment 1, n = 21 Experiment 2) and matched typical adults (n = 24 Experiment 1, n = 22 Experiment 2) was examined by requiring participants to perform an action in time with auditory (Experiment 1) or visual (Experiment 2) events.…

The present study examined the relationship between multisensory integration and the temporal binding window (TBW) for multisensory processing in adults with Autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The ASD group was less likely than the typically developing group to perceive an illusory flash induced by multisensory integration during a sound-induced…

Recent studies highlighted that autistic individuals show increased perceptual capacity -- the ability to process more information at any one time. This study examined whether there is a link between this increased perceptual capacity and the sensory hypersensitivity that many autistic people experience on a daily basis. In total, 38 autistic and…

Previous studies have suggested audiovisual multisensory integration (MSI) may be atypical in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, much of the research having found an alteration in MSI in ASD involved socio-communicative stimuli. The goal of the current study was to investigate MSI abilities in ASD using lower-level stimuli that are not…

This study tested whether individuals with autism spectrum conditions (n = 23) show enhanced discrimination of acoustic differences that signal a linguistic contrast (i.e., /g/ versus /k/ as in "goat" and "coat") and whether they process such differences in a less categorical fashion as compared with 23 IQ-matched typically…

Convergent research suggests that people with ASD have difficulties localizing sounds in space. These difficulties have implications for communication, the development of social behavior, and quality of life. Recently, a theory has emerged which treats perceptual symptoms in ASD as the product of impairments in implicit Bayesian inference; as…

Previous studies have indicated that visual-auditory temporal acuity is reduced in children with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) in comparison to neurotypicals. In the present study we investigated temporal acuity for all possible bimodal pairings of visual, tactile and auditory information in adults with ASC (n = 18) and a matched control group…

Current views suggest that autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are characterised by enhanced low-level auditory discrimination abilities. Little is known, however, about whether enhanced abilities are universal in ASD and how they relate to symptomatology. We tested auditory discrimination for intensity, frequency and duration in 21 adults with ASD…

Whilst enhanced perception has been widely reported in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs), relatively little is known about the developmental trajectory and impact of atypical auditory processing on speech perception in intellectually high-functioning adults with ASD. This paper presents data on perception of complex tones and…

This study used fMRI to measure brain activity during adult processing of cries of infants with autistic disorder (AD) compared to cries of typically developing (TD) infants. Using whole brain analysis, we found that cries of infants with AD compared to those of TD infants elicited enhanced activity in brain regions associated with verbal and…