Audiovisual integration in high functioning adults with autism

Autism involves various perceptual benefits and deficits, but it is unclear if the disorder also involves anomalous audiovisual integration. To address this issue, we compared the performance of high-functioning adults with autism and matched controls on experiments investigating the audiovisual integration of speech, spatiotemporal relations, and temporal numerosity. In each experiment, performance for both groups was faster and more accurate when audiovisual information was congruent rather than incongruent. Importantly, audiovisual congruency did not affect the control group more than the autism group. These results suggest that the ability to integrate between the auditory and visual sense modalities is unimpaired among high-functioning adults with autism. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.