Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by atypical social communication and restricted and repetitive behaviors; such traits are continuously distributed across nonclinical and clinical populations. Recently, relationships between ASD traits and low-level multisensory processing have been investigated, because atypical sensory reactivity has been regarded as a diagnostic criterion of ASD. Studies regarding an audiovisual illusion (the double-flash illusion) reported that social communication difficulties are related to temporal aspects of audiovisual integration. This study investigated whether similar relationships exist in another audiovisual illusion (the stream-bounce effect). In this illusion, two visual objects move toward each other, coincide, and pass each other, and the presentation of a transient sound at their coincidence induces a dominant perception that they bounce away from each other. Typically developing adults were recruited to perform experimental trials involving the stream-bounce effect. We measured their ASD traits using the Autism-Spectrum Quotient. The total quotient score was not related to any behavioral measurements of the effect. In contrast, for participants with higher difficulty in communication, the greatest magnitude of the stream-bounce effect occurred when the presentation timing of the sound tended to follow the visual coincidence. Participants with higher difficulty in imagination also showed the greatest magnitude of the effect when the presentation timing of the sound preceded that of the visual coincidence. Our findings regarding the stream-bounce effect, along with previous findings regarding the double-flash illusion, suggest that atypical temporal audiovisual integration is uniquely related to ASD sub-traits, especially in social communication.

中文翻译：

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自闭症的沟通和想象力子特征与流弹跳错觉中的视听时间整合有关。


自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的特点是非典型的社交沟通以及受限和重复的行为；这些特征持续分布在非临床和临床人群中。最近，由于非典型感觉反应性已被视为 ASD 的诊断标准，因此人们对 ASD 特征与低水平多感觉处理之间的关系进行了研究。关于视听错觉（双闪错觉）的研究报告称，社交沟通困难与视听整合的时间方面有关。这项研究调查了另一种视听错觉（流弹跳效应）中是否存在类似的关系。在这种错觉中，两个视觉对象向彼此移动、重合并相互经过，并且在它们重合时呈现短暂的声音会引起一种主要的感觉，即它们彼此弹开。通常招募发育中的成年人来进行涉及流弹跳效应的实验。我们使用自闭症谱系商数测量了他们的自闭症特征。总商分数与效果的任何行为测量无关。相反，对于沟通难度较高的参与者来说，当声音的呈现时间倾向于遵循视觉重合时，流反弹效应发生的幅度最大。当声音的呈现时间早于视觉巧合的呈现时间时，想象力较高的参与者也表现出最大程度的效果。 我们关于流弹跳效应的研究结果，以及之前关于双闪错觉的研究结果表明，非典型的时间视听整合与自闭症谱系障碍亚特征有着独特的相关性，尤其是在社交沟通中。