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Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

, Volume 49, Issue 2, pp 788–793 | Cite as

Brief Report: Typical Auditory-Motor and Enhanced Visual-Motor Temporal Synchronization in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder

  • Rosanna Edey
  • Rebecca Brewer
  • Geoffrey Bird
  • Clare PressEmail author
Brief Report
First Online:

Abstract

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. Individuals with autism performed comparably to typical participants in the auditory task and exhibited less temporal error relative to their typical counterparts in the visual task. These findings suggest that perception of subsecond intervals is intact in autism, if not enhanced. Results support recent Bayesian theories of enhanced visual-perceptual precision in people with autism, and extend empirical support into the precision of subsecond temporal estimates.

Keywords

Time perception Sensorimotor coordination Audition Vision 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Sophie Sowden for help with testing. CP was funded by a Leverhulme Trust Grant Number RPG-2016-105 and GB was funded by the Baily Thomas Charitable Fund.

Author Contributions

All authors contributed to the design of the study and were involved in writing the manuscript. RE and RB collected the data. RE analysed the data. CP supervised the work.

Compliance with Ethical Standards

Conflict of interest

All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Supplementary material

10803_2018_3725_MOESM1_ESM.doc (42 kb)
Supplementary material 1 (DOC 41 KB)

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© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of Psychological Sciences, BirkbeckUniversity of LondonLondonUK
  2. 2.Department of Psychology, Royal HollowayUniversity of LondonLondonUK
  3. 3.Department of Experimental PsychologyUniversity of OxfordOxfordUK

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