Minimal Differences in Auditory and Visual Oddball Tasks in Autism: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

The visual analysis rested on only 15 studies, so the visual results are less stable than the auditory results. 24 auditory and 5 visual studies were flagged as potential outliers, so the pooled estimates do not describe one consistent group difference. Many included studies did not match autistic and non-autistic participants well on age and IQ. Only 23.08% of studies explicitly excluded syndromic autism, and the authors say this reduced study quality. The samples were often verbal, lower-support autistic individuals, so the results may not apply to people with high support needs or syndromic autism. Some apparent moderator effects, including symptomology in auditory behavioral studies, did not survive the stricter robust variance estimation check. The paper did not test a clinical intervention or a therapy outcome.

Do not conclude that autistic people have no sensory prediction differences. This paper only shows that auditory and visual oddball tasks did not produce a consistent group difference across studies, and the authors note that complex social stimuli may need more research.