Previous studies reported mixed findings on autistic individuals' pitch perception relative to neurotypical (NT) individuals. We investigated whether this may be partly due to individual differences in cognitive abilities by comparing their performance on various pitch perception tasks on a large sample (n = 164) of autistic and NT children and…

This study examined individual differences as well as the development of sensory processing difficulties in children with Williams syndrome (WS) using a cross-sectional (Experiment 1) and longitudinal design (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, a clustering approach of sensory processing scores suggested two groups. Experiment 2 showed that the…

Face recognition difficulties are common in autism and could be a consequence of perceptual atypicalities that disrupt the ability to integrate current and prior information. We tested this theory by measuring the strength of serial dependence for faces (i.e. how likely is it that current perception of a face is biased towards a previously seen…

Parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) report increased distress relative to parents of children with neurotypical development. Parent well-being is generally considered a key determinant of parenting behavior, thus increased distress may spill over into less optimal parenting in families of children with ASD. However, evidence is…

Chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11DS) is characterised by a complex behavioural phenotype including anxiety, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and psychosis. In the current study, we aimed at improving our understanding of the heterogeneity of behavioural characteristics in a group of 129 young people (aged 4022) with a confirmed…

We measured the pupil response to a light stimulus subject to a size illusion and found that stimuli perceived as larger evoke a stronger pupillary response. The size illusion depends on combining retinal signals with contextual 3D information; contextual processing is thought to vary across individuals, being weaker in individuals with stronger…

Purpose: This study examined predictors of sexual victimization among autistic and non-autistic college students. Specifically, we aimed to determine whether autistic students are more likely than non-autistic students to experience unwanted sexual contact and sexual assault, controlling for co-occurring diagnoses. We also aimed to determine…

How do we decide whether a statement is literally true? Here, we contrast participants' eventual evaluations of a speaker's meaning with the real-time processes of comprehension. We record participants' eye movements as they respond to potentially misleading instructions to click on one of two objects which might be concealing treasure ("the…

Motor challenges are commonly reported in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Yet, there is substantial heterogeneity in motor ability within ASD, and it is unknown what behavioral characteristics best explain individual differences in motor ability in ASD and related conditions. This observational study examined motor ability as a function of sensory…

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) show atypical attention, particularly for social events. The new Multisensory Attention Assessment Protocol (MAAP) assesses fine-grained individual differences in attention disengagement, maintenance, and audiovisual matching for social and nonsocial events. We investigated the role of competing…

Sensory abnormalities in autism has been noted clinically, with pain insensitivity as a specified diagnostic criterion. However, there is limited research using psychophysically robust techniques. Thirteen adults with ASD and 13 matched controls completed an established quantitative sensory testing (QST) battery, supplemented with measures of pain…

People differ in how strongly they believe that, in general, one gets what (s)he deserves (i.e., individual differences in the "general belief in a just world"). In this study (N = 588; n = 60 with a formal autism diagnosis), whether or not autistic people and those with high autistic traits have a relatively low general belief in a just…

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…

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is generally associated with difficulties in contextual source memory but not single item memory. There are surprising inconsistencies in the literature, however, that the current study seeks to address by examining item and source memory in age and ability matched groups of 22 ASD and 21 comparison adults. Results…

Many individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have symptoms of sensory hypersensitivity. Several studies have shown high individual variations in temporal processing of tactile stimuli. We hypothesized that these individual differences are linked to differences in hyper-reactivity among individuals with ASD. Participants performed two tasks…