Cart Before the Horse Research: Multisensory Integration in Autism

A short article appeared on the ScienceDaily website a few weeks back, reporting on a piece of research published in The Journal of Neuroscience, January 15, 2014. The title of the research study was not given, but a link brings one to “Multisensory Temporal Integration in Autism Spectrum Disorders.”

The brief summary of the research is problematic for me from beginning to end, because it is an (altogether too common) example of research that starts with a false premise and then proceeds to offer advice to “treat” a problem that may not exist in the first place.

The major false premise, common to much autism research, is that autism is a “disorder” rather than a difference. When a researcher starts from that premise, they will be looking for “causes” of the “defect” rather than for an understanding of the source, function, and consequences of the difference.

In the study, Vanderbilt researchers compared 32 typically developing children ages 6-18 years old with 32 high-functioning children with autism, matching the groups in virtually every possible way including IQ.

This highlights a potentially major problem in research about autistic children (and very little has been done using adults, so research on children accounts for the preponderance of “findings” about autism). Autism is generally acknowledged to be a developmental difference, with some skills developing more rapidly and some more slowly compared with neurotypical (NT) children. So, age-matching is going to distort the results. There might be a very marked difference in ability in childhood, but that difference might disappear by the time people reach adulthood. This needs to be accounted for, in my opinion, but it seldom (if ever) is, in the research I have read.

“Children with autism have difficulty processing simultaneous input from audio and visual channels. That is, they have trouble integrating simultaneous information from their eyes and their ears,” said co-author Stephen Camarata, Ph.D., professor of Hearing and Speech Sciences. “It is like they are watching a foreign movie that was badly dubbed, the auditory and visual signals do not match in their brains.”

Okay, so we “have difficulty” and “the auditory and visual signals do not match in [our] brains” — that does not mean we can’t integrate the two, it’s just slower. This is consistent with the Intense World Theory of Autism.

“One of the classic pictures of children with autism is they have their hands over their ears,” Wallace said. “We believe that one reason for this may be that they are trying to compensate for their changes in sensory function by simply looking at one sense at a time. This may be a strategy to minimize the confusion between the senses.”

Hmmh — “We believe…” and “This may be…” — I wonder if it ever occurred to him to ask any autistic people to comment on that. This is a common arrogance, that NT scientists somehow mysteriously know more about what it’s like to be autistic than do autistic people. Bizarre.

Wallace noted that the recently-released Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, (DSM-5), which serves as a universal authority for psychiatric diagnosis, now acknowledges sensory processing as a core deficit in autism.

Perhaps needless to say, I don’t believe that autism belongs in the DSM, any more than homosexuality did. It’s a difference, not a “psychiatric diagnosis.” And I think Wallace has distorted the role of sensory processing in autism. It’s not a “deficit” but one of the differences that presents many challenges in a world that was designed by and for NTs.

“There is a huge amount of effort and energy going into the treatment of children with autism, virtually none of it is based on a strong empirical foundation tied to sensory function,” Wallace said. “If we can fix this deficit in early sensory function then maybe we can see benefits in language and communication and social interactions.”

Given all the problems in this write-up, I can’t imagine that this research has any value at all. One can’t “fix” a “deficit” that doesn’t exist, and autism does not need “treatment.” It’s very discouraging to think of all the effort that goes into demeaning autistic people instead of trying to help them deal with an unfriendly world.

A couple of caveats:

1. My comments here are based only on the description linked to here, which in turn seems to have been taken from the press release put out by Vanderbilt University Medical Center. I did not read the original article, which is copyrighted and behind a pay wall, and there is no contact information given for the authors. So much for the free and open flow of scientific ideas and information.
2. I do not have any training in the field of neuroscience or any related area. My background is in financial economics, and my interest is a personal one. That said, I have learned much and formed many opinions over the past few years.