Severe Multisensory Speech Integration Deficits in High-Functioning School-Aged Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Their Resolution During Early Adolescence

Under noisy listening conditions, visualizing a speaker’s articulations substantially improves speech intelligibility. This multisensory speech integration ability is crucial to effective communication, and the appropriate development of this capacity greatly impacts a child’s ability to successfully navigate educational and social set-tings. Research shows that multisensory integration abilities con-tinue developing late into childhood. The primary aim here was to track the development of these abilities in children with autism, since multisensory deficits are increasingly recognized as a com-ponent of the autism spectrum disorder (ASD) phenotype. The abil-ities of high-functioning ASD children (n = 84) to integrate seen and heard speech were assessed cross-sectionally, while environmental noise levels were systematically manipulated, comparing them with age-matched neurotypical children (n=142). Severe integration defi-cits were uncovered in ASD, which were increasingly pronounced a