Brief Report: Which Came First? Exploring Crossmodal Temporal Order Judgements and Their Relationship with Sensory Reactivity in Autism and Neurotypicals.

The study used small groups (18 adults with autism and 18 controls), and the analysed sample was smaller than the recruited sample in some pairings. Participants were adults with IQ above 80 and normal or corrected-to-normal vision, so results may not apply to children or people with more marked cognitive or communication difficulties. The timing task used delays chosen from previous neurotypical studies, with only 10 repetitions per delay, so it may not have been sensitive enough to detect differences. The sensory reactivity analyses were exploratory; the overall regression models were not significant, and the isolated predictor findings were not confirmed by follow-up correlations. The autism group showed more variable performance than controls, which may matter more than the average group difference. No intervention was tested, so the study cannot show that changing temporal processing or sensory bias would improve function.

The paper reports funding by the Medical Research Council.

Do not conclude that adults with autism have normal crossmodal timing or that timing problems cause sensory reactivity. The main group comparisons were null, the sensory reactivity models were exploratory and overall not significant, and no intervention was tested.