Sensitivity to audio-visual synchrony and its relation to language abilities in children with and without ASD.
Giulia Righi, Elena J Tenenbaum, Carolyn McCormick and 3 others
PMID 29331093WHAT IT FOUND
Typically developing children looked more at the video matching the sound when the other video was off by 0.6 or 1.0 seconds.
Children with ASD did not show this preference. More looking at the matching video was associated with better language scores.
Key findings
01Typically developing children looked more at the synchronous video at 0.6s and 1.0s delays; children with ASD did not at any delay.
02Across children, looking at the synchronous video at 1.0s delay was associated with language scores after age was included.
03Typically developing children looked more at the mouth than children with ASD, while eye looking did not differ.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The ASD and typically developing groups were not matched on age or cognitive scores. The ASD group was older, and the typically developing group had higher cognitive scores. The study combined data from two laboratories and two ongoing studies, even though language scores differed by laboratory. Some participants had incomplete ADOS, language, or eye tracking data, and some were excluded after testing. The design is observational. It shows an association between looking behaviour and language scores, not that poor synchrony sensitivity causes language difficulty. The authors could not rule out that looking less at the mouth is due to aversion rather than difficulty using mouth information.
Declared interests
The paper lists NIH extramural and non-U.S. government research support.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that ASD causes poor audio-visual synchrony sensitivity or that improving synchrony attention will improve language. The study is observational, and the authors state that causality cannot be inferred.