Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Amsterdam UMC, The Netherlands.
Autism. 2023 May;27(4):927-937. doi: 10.1177/13623613221121414. Epub 2022 Sep 7.
It has been known for a long time that individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder perceive the world differently. In this study, we investigated how people with or without autism perceive visual and auditory information. We know that an auditory and a visual stimulus do not have to be perfectly synchronous for us to perceive them as synchronous: first, when the two are within a certain time window (temporal binding window), the brain will tell us that they are synchronous. Second, the brain can also adapt quickly to audiovisual asynchronies (rapid recalibration). Although previous studies have shown that people with autism spectrum disorder have different temporal binding windows, and less rapid recalibration, we did not find these differences in our study. However, we did find that both processes develop over age, and since previous studies tested only young people (children, adolescents, and young adults), and we tested adults from 18 to 55 years, this might explain the different findings. In the end, there might be quite a complex story, where people with and without autism spectrum disorder perceive the world differently, even dependent on how old they are.
长期以来，人们都知道被诊断患有自闭症谱系障碍的个体对世界的感知方式不同。在这项研究中，我们调查了自闭症患者和非自闭症患者如何感知视觉和听觉信息。我们知道，即使听觉和视觉刺激不完全同步，我们的大脑也会将它们感知为同步：首先，当两者在一定的时间窗口（时间绑定窗口）内时，大脑会告诉我们它们是同步的。其次，大脑也可以快速适应视听异步（快速重新校准）。尽管先前的研究表明，自闭症谱系障碍患者的时间绑定窗口不同，快速重新校准能力也较低，但我们在本研究中并未发现这些差异。然而，我们确实发现这两个过程都随年龄增长而发展，由于先前的研究仅测试了年轻人（儿童、青少年和年轻人），而我们测试的成年人年龄在 18 至 55 岁之间，这可能解释了不同的发现。最后，可能存在一个相当复杂的情况，即自闭症患者和非自闭症患者以不同的方式感知世界，甚至取决于他们的年龄。
