Capturing Phenotypic Heterogeneity in Differentiated Sensory Processing Profiles: Non-Syndromic Autism and Fragile X Syndrome.
Chandler E Knott, Jane E Roberts, Elizabeth A Will
Autistic children scored highest on all three sensory features.
Children with FXS alone did not differ significantly from neurotypical peers. Sensory features linked to behavior problems in autism and FXS-only, but not in FXS with co-occurring autism.
Key findings
1Autistic children scored significantly higher than every other group on hyper-responsivity, hypo-responsivity, and sensory seeking, while children with FXS alone did not differ significantly from neurotypical children on any sensory feature.
2In the autistic group, hyper-responsivity correlated with internalizing (r = .58) and externalizing (r = .45) behavior, and hypo-responsivity correlated with internalizing behavior (r = .51). In the FXS-only group, hyper-responsivity correlated with internalizing (r = .66) and hypo-responsivity with both internalizing (r = .59) and externalizing (r = .75) behavior.
3No significant associations between any sensory processing feature and challenging behavior emerged in the FXS + ASD group, though two moderate correlations (r = .38, r = .34) fell just short of significance.
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What it does not show
All participants were male, so findings cannot be generalised to girls or women with autism or FXS. The FXS groups were small (15 and 20), which limits the power to detect moderate associations, as seen in the FXS + ASD group where two correlations fell just short of significance. Sensory processing and challenging behavior were both measured by parent report, so shared rater bias may inflate the observed correlations. The design is cross-sectional, so the associations cannot be read as causal or directional. 81% of participants were White and 96% were not Hispanic/Latino, limiting generalisability across ethnicities.
Declared interests
Funded by the National Institutes of Health (K99HD105980, R00HD105980, R01MH90194, R01MH107573). The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the lack of significant sensory-behavior associations in the FXS + ASD group as evidence that sensory issues do not affect these children. The group had 20 children, and two moderate correlations (r = .38, p = .094 and r = .34, p = .148) fell just short of the significance threshold, so the relationship may be present but undetected at this sample size.
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