Kojovic Nada, Ben Hadid Lylia, Franchini Martina, Schaer Marie
University of Geneva, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland.
Fondation Pôle Autisme, 1204 Geneva, Switzerland.
J Clin Med. 2019 Sep 20;8(10):1508. doi: 10.3390/jcm8101508.
Sensory processing issues have been frequently reported in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), but their relationship with social and overall adaptive functioning has not been extensively characterized to date. Here, we investigate how sensory processing atypicalities relate with deficits in social skills, impaired social cognition, and general adaptive functioning in a group of preschoolers with ASD. Sixty-four children with ASD aged 3 to 6 were included in this study, along with 36 age-matched typically-developing (TD) peers. Parent-reported measures of sensory processing, social difficulties and overall adaptive functioning were collected for all children. We also obtained precise measures of social attention deployment using a custom-design eye-tracking task depicting naturalistic social scenes. Within the group of children with ASD, higher intensities of sensory issues were associated with more prominent social difficulties and lower adaptive functioning. We also found that children with ASD who had more sensory issues showed visual exploration patterns of social scenes that strongly deviated from the one seen in the TD group. The association of sensory processing atypicalities with "higher-order" functional domains such as social and adaptive functioning in children with ASD stresses the importance of further research on sensory symptoms in autism.
感觉加工问题在自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）个体中经常被报道，但迄今为止，它们与社交及整体适应功能的关系尚未得到广泛描述。在此，我们研究了一组患有ASD的学龄前儿童的感觉加工异常如何与社交技能缺陷、社交认知受损及一般适应功能相关。本研究纳入了64名3至6岁的ASD儿童，以及36名年龄匹配的发育正常（TD）同龄人。收集了所有儿童家长报告的感觉加工、社交困难及整体适应功能的测量数据。我们还使用描绘自然社交场景的定制眼动追踪任务，获得了社交注意力分配的精确测量数据。在ASD儿童组中，较高强度的感觉问题与更突出的社交困难及更低的适应功能相关。我们还发现，感觉问题较多的ASD儿童在社交场景中的视觉探索模式与TD组有很大差异。感觉加工异常与ASD儿童的社交和适应功能等“高阶”功能领域的关联，强调了进一步研究自闭症感觉症状的重要性。
