Atypical Tactile Perception in Early Childhood Autism.
Svenja Espenhahn, Kate J Godfrey, Sakshi Kaur and 5 others
PMID 35482274WHAT IT FOUND
Young autistic children responded more slowly and inconsistently to touch.
Some differences in judging strength or timing of touch did not remain after accounting for non-verbal cognitive scores.
Key findings
01Autistic children had reaction-time values of 968.0 ms versus 631.1 ms in neurotypical children, and reaction-time variability values of 467.3 ms versus 139.2 ms; both differences remained after non-verbal IQ was accounted for.
02Autistic children showed 35% higher thresholds for telling which touch was stronger when touches came one after the other, 28% higher thresholds when touches came at the same time, and 86% higher thresholds for telling which touch came first, but these differences did not remain after non-verbal IQ was accounted for.
03Measured tactile performance was not related to parent-reported social features or behavioral tactile sensitivity in either group, or across groups when group was accounted for.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The final sample was small, with 20 autistic and 40 neurotypical children analysed. 13 of 33 recruited autistic children and 3 of 45 neurotypical children could not perform the tactile testing battery, and 2 neurotypical children were excluded for scoring above the autism cut-off. About 40% of recruited autistic children were unable to perform the battery, compared with 7% of neurotypical children. The sample may not represent all autistic children. Only 12 neurotypical and 9 autistic children completed the temporal-order judgement task, so those timing findings were exploratory. Some differences in amplitude and temporal-order judgement disappeared when non-verbal IQ was controlled, so the results may partly reflect cognitive ability rather than autism-specific tactile processing. The authors did not measure brain GABA directly, so their explanation about reduced cortical inhibition is speculative. The study measured children at one time point, so it does not show how tactile perception changes over development.
Declared interests
The supplied text lists funding from the Owerko Centre, Alberta Children's Hospital Research Institute, Mathison Centre for Mental Health Research and Education, Hotchkiss Brain Institute, University of Calgary, Sick Kids Foundation, and Canada Foundation for Innovation. It does not provide author conflict-of-interest declarations.
The easy way to misread this
Do not use these lab tactile thresholds to explain a child's parent-reported touch sensitivity or social features. Measured tactile performance was not related to parent-reported social features or behavioral tactile sensitivity.