Time perception in autism spectrum disorders

doi:10.1016/j.rasd.2007.09.005

Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders

Volume 2, Issue 3, July–September 2008, Pages 447-455

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2007.09.005 Get rights and content

Abstract

Duration judgment has not been comprehensively examined in autism spectrum disorders (ASD), despite reports of perceptual idiosyncrasies in these individuals. Time estimation, production, and reproduction were tested in 25 individuals with ASD and 25 controls matched group-wise on age and IQ. Individuals with ASD performed comparably to matched controls in time estimation and production, but showed a tendency to outperform controls on a task of time reproduction. Time perception of large units is intact for children and adolescents with ASD. Time reproduction may represent a cognitive asset in ASD, likely reflecting strengths in eidetic-type imagery in which a pure recording of a stimulus is less affected by top-down modulation.

Section snippets

Participants

Twenty-five school-age (ages 9–18 years) children with ASD took part in the investigation (see Table 1 for age, sex, and estimated FSIQ breakdown). Exclusion criteria for the ASD group included any known co-morbid medical conditions, such as Fragile X syndrome, other genetic disorder, or neurological disorder (e.g., Tourette's syndrome) that may affect cognitive functioning. Participants with ASD were recruited from two schools specializing in the treatment and education of pupils with ASD and

Between and within group analyses

For all data, the first step involved examining the distribution and scatter of scores. Since sample sizes were not large, outliers may exert disproportionate influence on results. Taking a conservative approach, where there were outliers and extremes the analyses were run with and without the outlier(s) and/or extreme(s) included.

Overall, ratio scores did not differ significantly between groups with outliers included (see Table 2). This pattern remained true after removing outliers from the

Discussion

Individuals with ASD in the present study demonstrated intact time estimation and time production, and at least intact time reproduction. Indeed, there was some indication of superior time reproduction among individuals with ASD, compared with age and IQ-matched controls This finding fits with reports of faithful, unaltered memory traces for other types of stimuli in individuals with ASD, whether savant (Mottron, Belleville, Stip, & Morasse, 1998; Spitz & LaFontaine, 1973) or nonsavant (Toichi

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the students and teachers who so kindly gave their time and energy to assist in this research.

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Autistic traits in a TD population, as measured by the Autistic Quotient [40] were found to be positively correlated to duration discrimination thresholds, extending the applicability of this finding to the broader autistic spectrum [41]. In contrast, some studies failed to report differences between ASD and control groups concerning interval timing [42–47]. Maister and al. suggested that these contradictions could be explained by the variety of measurement methods.
While the definition of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) does not include any explicit criteria concerning difficulties of time perception or management, there is growing evidence of atypical temporal perception in individuals with ASD. This review synthesizes the evidence and gaps of the current literature on time processing in ASD. After a brief overview of clinical findings and available assessment tools, we synthetize outcomes of studies evaluating time perception at second and infra-second level, and then, recent literature on the circadian timing system. Findings point that all levels of time processing are atypical in autism (i.e. millisecond, interval and circadian timing). We discuss how time perception abnormalities and ASD core symptoms might intertwine and offer a new perspective for future research on this topic. We advocate the need to systematically assess temporal perception in ASD, and to include these aspects in global functional assessments before intervention. Implementing early intervention techniques to remediate time perception alterations in children with ASD may substantially improve their developmental trajectory.
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Individuals with ASD have abnormal motor and perceptual functions that do not currently form diagnostic criteria of ASD, but nevertheless may affect everyday behaviour. Temporal processing seems to be one of such non-diagnostic yet impaired domains, although the lack of systematic studies testing different aspects of timing in the same sample of participants prevents a conclusive assessment of whether there is a generalized temporal deficit in ASD associated with diagnostic symptoms. 17 children diagnosed with ASD and 18 typically developing age- and IQ-matched controls carried out a set of motor and perceptual timing tasks: free tapping, simultaneity judgment, auditory duration discrimination, and verbal duration estimation. Parents of participants filled in a questionnaire assessing the sense and management of time. Children with ASD showed faster and more variable free tapping than controls. Auditory duration discrimination thresholds were higher in the ASD group than controls in a sub-second version of the task, while there were no group differences in a supra-second discrimination of intervals. Children with ASD showed more variable thresholds of simultaneity judgment, and they received lower parental scores for their sense and management of time. No group differences were observed in the verbal duration estimation task in the minute-range. Different timing functions were correlated in the ASD group but not among controls, whilst several timing measures correlated with ASD symptoms. We conclude that children with ASD show a broad range of abnormalities in temporal processing tasks including motor timing, perceptual timing, and temporal perspective.
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In contrast with the described studies, Mostofsky et al. (2000) and Jones et al. (2009) found no differences between children and adolescents with ASD and their controls when using an auditory duration comparison task (below 1000 ms). Gil et al. (2012) found no group difference between ASD and TDC children in a time bisection task using durations between 0.5 and 16.62 s. Wallace and Happe (2008) even suggested that children with ASD can show superior performance to TDC children in a reproduction task using longer durations (2 to 45 s), and found no difference between groups in estimation and production tasks using the same durations. The latter results should be taken with caution as they were obtained with only 2 trials per duration and using a manual timing procedure.
Interval timing, the ability to judge the duration of short events, has been shown to be compromised in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Timing abilities are ubiquitous and underlie behaviours as varied as sensory integration, motor coordination or communication. It has been suggested that atypical temporal processing in ASD could contribute to some of the disorder's symptoms, in particular motor clumsiness and difficulties in social interaction and communication. Recent behavioural investigations have suggested that interval timing in ASD is characterised by intact sensitivity but reduced precision in duration judgements.
In this study we investigated the processing of duration as compared to pitch in a group of high-functioning individuals with ASD using magnetoencephalography (MEG). 18 adolescents and adults with ASD and 18 age- and IQ-matched typically-developing control (TDC) individuals compared two consecutive tones according to their duration or pitch in separate experimental blocks. The analysis was carried out exclusively on physically identical stimuli (500 Hz tones lasting 600 ms), which served, according to instruction, as standard or probe in a Duration or Pitch task respectively.
Our results suggest that compared to TDC individuals, individuals with ASD are less able to predict the duration of the standard tone accurately, affecting the sensitivity of the comparison process. In addition, contrary to TDC individuals who allocate resources at different times depending on the nature of the task (pitch or duration discrimination), individuals with ASD seem to engage less resources for the Duration task than for the Pitch task regardless of the context. Although individuals with ASD showed top-down adaptation to the context of the task, this neuronal strategy reflects a bias in the readiness to perform different types of tasks, and in particular a diminished allocation of resources to duration processing which could have cascading effect on learning and development of other cognitive functions.
Alexithymia, not autism, is associated with impaired interoception
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While both hyper- and hypo-sensitivity to interoceptive signals may be consistent with Quattrocki and Friston's (2014) interoception account, there are other factors which may have led to the inconsistent results concerning interoceptive ability in ASD. For example, the superior heartbeat counting performance demonstrated by the autistic children in Schauder et al.'s (2015) study was only demonstrated at the longest test durations, raising the possibility that their enhanced performance was due to non-specific factors, such as the increased attention to counting tasks or enhanced time perception demonstrated by children with autism (e.g., Wallace & Happé, 2008). Of most relevance to the present study, however, is the fact that previous studies do not account for the elevated levels of alexithymia in the autistic population.
It has been proposed that Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is associated with difficulties perceiving the internal state of one's body (i.e., impaired interoception), causing the socio-emotional deficits which are a diagnostic feature of the condition. However, research indicates that alexithymia – characterized by difficulties in recognizing emotions from internal bodily sensations – is also linked to atypical interoception. Elevated rates of alexithymia in the autistic population have been shown to underpin several socio-emotional impairments thought to be symptomatic of ASD, raising the possibility that interoceptive difficulties in ASD are also due to co-occurring alexithymia. Following this line of inquiry, the present study examined the relative impact of alexithymia and autism on interoceptive accuracy (IA). Across two experiments, it was found that alexithymia, not autism, was associated with atypical interoception. Results indicate that interoceptive impairments should not be considered a feature of ASD, but instead due to co-occurring alexithymia.
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Among the candidate endophenotypes of ADHD are working memory (Martinussen, Hayden, Hogg-Johnson, & Tannock, 2005), response inhibition (Barkley, 1997; Nigg, Blaskey, Stawicki, & Sachek, 2004) and temporal processing (Toplak, Dockstader, & Tannock, 2006; Gooch, Snowling, & Hulme, 2011). All of these constructs have been assessed in patients with autism, yielding overall mixed results (e.g., Bhatara, Babikian, Laugeson, Tachdjian, & Sininger, 2013; Falter, Noereika, Wearden, & Bailey, 2012; Joseph, Steele, Meyer, & Tager-Flusberg, 2005; Kana, Keller, Minshew, & Just, 2007; Martin, Poirier, & Bowler, 2010; Ozonoff & Strayer, 2001; Steele, Minshew, Luna, & Sweeney, 2007; Wallace & Happé 2008). Importantly, most of the studies assessing functions in ASD patients that are considered as endophenotypes of ADHD did not consider comorbidity with ADHD, or, if considered, did not analyse their data according to these sub-groups.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have previously been studied mainly in isolation from each other. However the two conditions may be aetiologically related and thus show overlap in aetiologically relevant functions. In order to address this question of potential aetiological overlap between ADHD and ASD, the present study set out to investigate putative endophenotypes of ADHD in N = 33 typically developing (TD) children and N = 28 patients with ASD that were (ASD+) or were not (ASD−) co-morbid for ADHD. With regard to both the cognitive endophenotype candidates (working memory, inhibition, temporal processing) and intra-subject variability (ISV) the pattern of abnormalities was inconsistent. Furthermore, the overall profile of ASD-TD differences was extremely similar to the pattern of differences between the ASD+ and ASD− sub-groups, suggesting that any abnormalities found were due to the comorbid ASD subgroup. This held in particular for ISV, which did not show in patients with ASD the task-general increase that is common in ADHD samples. Altogether, the present results do not support the hypothesis of aetiological overlap between ASD and ADHD.
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Published by Elsevier Ltd

Time perception in autism spectrum disorders

Abstract

Section snippets

Participants

Between and within group analyses

Discussion

Acknowledgments

Neuron

Brain and Cognition

Behavioral Brain Research

Neuropsychologia

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

The diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders

Behavioral inhibition, sustained attention, and executive functions: Constructing a unifying theory of ADHD

Psychological Bulletin

Executive functioning, temporal discounting, and sense of time in adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD)

Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology

Sense of time in children with ADHD: Effects of duration, distraction, and stimulant medication

Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society

Time perception and reproduction in young adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Neuropsychology