The ability to integrate auditory and visual information is important for everyday life. The Temporal Integration Window (TIW) measures how much asynchrony can be tolerated between auditory and visual streams before one loses the perception of a unitary audiovisual event. Previous investigations of TIW in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) show mixed results in how performance compares to typically developed individuals (TD). The current study looked at TIW across a range of audiovisual stimuli to further examine this issue. The stimuli included the following audiovisual pairings: 1) a beep with a flashing circle (BF), 2) a point-light drummer with a drumbeat (PLD), 3) a face moving to say a single word and the voice saying the word (FV).
Eleven adult males with ASD, and their age, sex and IQ matches were shown the three audiovisual stimuli with varying degrees of audiovisual asynchrony. In separate blocks participants were asked to make either Temporal Order Judgements (TOJ) or Synchrony Judgements (SJ) when presented with these stimuli. For both TOJ and SJ psychophysical fits to the data provided estimates of the Point of Subjective Synchrony (PSS) and the width of TIW.
Individual ANOVAs on TIW and PSS for every stimulus type were ran using a within factor of judgement (SJ, TOJ) and a between factor of group (ASD, TD). These revealed no group differences in TIW or PSS. However, the FV TIW was significantly wider for TOJ than SJ. Additionally, PSS for all stimuli was significantly influenced by the types of judgements.

Audiovisual temporal integration; Autism Spectrum Disorder