title: Altered temporal profile of visual–auditory multisensory interactions in dyslexia Autism spectrum disorders and childhood-onset schizophrenia: clinical and biological contributions to a relation revisited. Discrimination of temporal synchrony in intermodal events by children with autism and children with developmental disabilities without autism. Autistic traits in the general population: a twin study.
abstract: Recent studies have demonstrated that dyslexia is associated with deficits in the temporal encoding of sensory information . While most previous studies have focused on information processing within a single sensory modality , it is clear that the deficits seen in dyslexia span multiple sensory systems . Surprisingly , although the development of linguistic proficiency involves the rapid and accurate integration of auditory and visual cues , the capacity of dyslexic individuals to integrate information between the different senses has not been systematic ally examined . To test this , we studied the effects of task-irrelevant auditory information on the performance of a  visual temporal-order-judgment ( TOJ ) task .  Dyslexic subjects ’ performance differed significantly from that of control subjects , specifically in that they integrated the auditory and visual information over longer temporal intervals . Such a result suggests an extended temporal “ window ” for binding visual and auditory cues in dyslexic individuals . The potential deleterious effects of this finding for rapid multisensory processes such as reading are discussed OBJECTIVE To highlight emerging evidence for clinical and biological links between autism/pervasive developmental disorder ( PDD ) and schizophrenia , with particular attention to childhood-onset schizophrenia ( COS ) . METHOD Clinical , demographic , and brain developmental data from the National Institute of Mental Health ( and other ) COS studies and selected family , imaging , and genetic data from studies of autism , PDD , and schizophrenia were review ed . RESULTS In the two large studies that have examined this systematic ally , COS is preceded by and comorbid with PDD in 30 % to 50 % of cases . Epidemiological and family studies find association between the disorders . Both disorders have evidence of accelerated trajectories of anatomic brain development at ages near disorder onset . A growing number of risk genes and /or rare small chromosomal variants ( microdeletions or duplications ) are shared by schizophrenia and autism . CONCLUSIONS Biological risk does not closely follow DSM phenotypes , and core neurobiological processes are likely common for subsets of these two heterogeneous clinical groups . Long-term prospect i ve follow-up of autistic population s and greater diagnostic distinction between schizophrenia spectrum and autism spectrum disorders in adult relatives are needed BACKGROUND This project examined the intermodal perception of temporal synchrony in 16 young children ( ages 4 to 6 years ) with autism compared to a group of children without impairments matched on adaptive age , and a group of children with other developmental disabilities matched on chronological and adaptive age . METHOD A preferential looking paradigm was used , where participants viewed non-linguistic , simple linguistic or complex linguistic events on two screens displaying identical video tracks , but one offset from the other by 3 seconds , and with the single audio track matched to only one of the displays . RESULTS As predicted , both comparison groups demonstrated significant non-r and om preferential looking to violations of temporal synchrony with linguistic and non-linguistic stimuli . However , the group with autism showed an impaired , chance level of responding , except when presented with non-linguistic stimuli . CONCLUSIONS Several explanations are offered for this apparently autism-specific , language -specific pattern of responding to temporal synchrony , and potential developmental sequelae are discussed BACKGROUND Recent research has indicated that autism is not a discrete disorder and that family members of autistic prob and s have an increased likelihood of exhibiting autistic symptoms with a wide range of severity , often below the threshold for a diagnosis of an autism spectrum disorder . OBJECTIVE To examine the distribution and genetic structure of autistic traits in the general population using a newly established quantitative measure of autistic traits , the Social Responsiveness Scale ( formerly known as the Social Reciprocity Scale ) . METHODS The sample consisted of 788 pairs of twins aged 7 to 15 years , r and omly selected from the pool of participants in a large epidemiologic study ( the Missouri Twin Study ) . One parent of each pair of twins completed the  Social Responsiveness Scale on each child . The data were subjected to structural equation modeling . RESULTS Autistic traits as measured by the Social Responsiveness Scale were continuously distributed and moderately to highly heritable . Levels of severity of autistic traits at or above the previously published mean for patients with pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified were found in 1.4 % of boys and 0.3 % of girls . Structural equation modeling revealed no evidence for the existence of sex-specific genetic influences , and suggested specific mechanisms by which females may be relatively protected from vulnerability to autistic traits . CONCLUSIONS These data indicate that the social deficits characteristic of autism spectrum disorders are common . Given the continuous distribution of these traits , it may be arbitrary where cutoffs are made between research design ations of being " affected " vs " unaffected " with a pervasive developmental disorder . The genes influencing autistic traits appear to be the same for boys and girls . Lower prevalence ( and severity ) of autistic traits in girls may be the result of increased sensitivity to early environmental influences that operate to promote social competency
target: By further separating studies into unisensory and multisensory ( bimodal : audiovisual ) ones , subgroup analysis indicated heterogeneous and unstable effects for unisensory temporal binding in the ASD group , but a more consistent and severe impairment in multisensory temporal integration represented by an enlarged temporal binding window in both clinical groups .
  Such multisensory dysfunction is associated with symptoms like hallucinations and impaired social communications .
background: HighlightsMultisensory temporal dysfunction represented by an extended temporal binding window is a common feature of ASD and SSD.Unisensory temporal acuity is impaired in schizophrenia but may be spared in ASD.Multisensory dysfunction is associated with incoherent perception and communicative deficit that characterize SSD and ASD . &
  NA ; Multisensory temporal integration could be compromised in both autism spectrum disorders ( ASD ) and schizophrenia spectrum disorders ( SSD ) and may play an important role in perceptual and cognitive impairment in these two disorders .
  This review aim ed to quantitatively compare the sensory temporal acuity between healthy controls and the two clinical groups ( ASD and SSD ) .