Altered social cognition is a core feature of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). These impairments have been explained as the consequence of compromised social motivational mechanisms that limit social interest and activate a cascade of social deficits. Following this rational, we argue that approaches capable of surpassing ASD usual restraints (e.g., deficits in verbal abilities), and able to assign social meaning, could be more effective at responding to these difficulties. In this framework, we propose that olfaction, as well as cross-modal integration strategies involving both visual and olfactory domains, may have such potential. In fact, most of socioemotional processing deficits in ASD have been shown in an uni-modal perspective, mainly with visual stimuli. However, the social environment involves other modalities and is typically multisensorial. Given the potential of olfaction as a gateway for socioemotional information in ASD, we argue in favor of studying olfactory perception, as well as visuo-olfactory integration, given the potential of these approaches to drive effective interventions and give the access to a meaningful social world in ASD.

改变的社会认知是自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的核心特征。这些障碍已被解释为社会动机机制受损的结果，这些机制限制了社会利益并激活了一系列的社会赤字。遵循这种理性，我们认为能够超越ASD常规限制（例如，言语能力不足）并且能够赋予社会意义的方法在应对这些困难方面可能更为有效。在此框架中，我们建议嗅觉以及涉及视觉和嗅觉域的跨模式整合策略可能具有这种潜力。实际上，ASD的大多数社会情感加工缺陷已在单模态视角下显示，主要是视觉刺激。然而，社会环境涉及其他方式，通常是多感官的。考虑到嗅觉作为ASD中社会情感信息门户的潜力，我们主张研究嗅觉和视觉-嗅觉整合，因为这些方法有可能推动有效的干预措施并提供进入有意义的社会世界的途径在ASD中。