Vision in autism spectrum disorders

Abstract

Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are developmental disorders which are thought primarily to affect social functioning. However, there is now a growing body of evidence that unusual sensory processing is at least a concomitant and possibly the cause of many of the behavioural signs and symptoms of ASD. A comprehensive and critical review of the phenomenological, empirical, neuroscientific and theoretical literature pertaining to visual processing in ASD is presented, along with a brief justification of a new theory which may help to explain some of the data, and link it with other current hypotheses about the genetic and neural aetiologies of this enigmatic condition.

Brain dynamics in ASD during movie‐watching show idiosyncratic functional integration and segregation

“…Interestingly, it has recently been suggested that increased visual responsiveness to low‐level features, as reported in this study, may arise due to a larger noise in the primary visual system (Simmons et al, 2009; Lawson, Rees, & Friston, 2014). Along those lines, a larger intra‐individual variability of the evoked visual response has been reported in ASD (Dinstein et al, 2012; Haigh, Heeger, Dinstein, Minshew, & Behrmann, 2015).…”

Fragile Spectral and Temporal Auditory Processing in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Early Language Delay

“…Hyper and hyposensitivity to sensory stimulation (e.g., Kern et al 2006;Khalfa et al 2004) as well as atypical sensory processing abilities (e.g., Leekam et al 2007;Simmons et al 2009;Talay-Ongan and Wood 2000) are often reported and have been included in the new diagnostic criteria of ASD in DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association 2013). Delayed or deviant speech and language development are also often reported but are no longer incorporated in the diagnostic criteria of the disorder (American Psychiatric Association 2000, 2013.…”

Local Versus Global Processing in Autism: Special Section Editorial

“…Van der Hallen et al's (2015) analysis confirmed a suspicion expressed earlier on the same page of Simmons et al (2009) that much of the data on vision and autism published between 2005 and 2009 was "… contradictory, or at least contested." A frustrating feature of much research on vision in ASD has been that a positive result showing a significant difference between autistic and some sort of control population published one year is almost inevitably followed by a failed replication as the "file drawer" opens, consistent with Van der Hallen et al's (2015) analysis.…”

“…general review of the literature on vision in Autism Spectrum Disorder (Simmons et al 2009) and the more recent publication, from the Leuven group of which Dr. Boets was then a part, of a meta-analysis focused on the topic (van der Hallen et al 2015).…”

“…Whilst Simmons et al (2009) came down in favour of superior local processing ("… local superiority effects in tasks such as visual search seem to be holding their own", p. 2728), Van der Hallen et al (2015) found strong evidence of publication bias in this literature which was obscuring a small-to-insignificant effect except in cases where the Dependent Variable was Reaction Time and the task was a "global" judgement in the presence of "local" distractors, such as one version of the well-known Navon task. Van der Hallen et al's (2015) analysis confirmed a suspicion expressed earlier on the same page of Simmons et al (2009) that much of the data on vision and autism published between 2005 and 2009 was "… contradictory, or at least contested."…”