Visual working memory and sensory processing in autistic children

Atypical sensory processing one of the more ubiquitous symptoms in autism spectrum disorder, the exact nature of these sensory issues remains unclear, with different studies showing either enhanced or deficient sensory processing. Using a well-established continuous free-recall task that assesses visual working memory, the current study provides novel evidence reconciling these apparently discrepant findings by showing both enhanced and impaired sensory processing in the same individuals on distinct aspects of the same task and stimuli. Autistic children exhibited perceptual advantages in both likelihood of recall and recall precision relative to their typically-developed peers. When autistic children did make errors, however, they showed a higher probability of erroneously binding a given colour with the incorrect spatial location. These data indicate that although the initial perceptual representations of sensory inputs were maintained with enhanced fidelity, the subsequent cognitive process of binding multiple features of sensory information into one percept was impaired. These data align with neural-architecture models for feature binding in visual working memory, suggesting that atypical population-level neural noise in the report dimension (colour) and cue dimension (spatial location) may drive both the increase in probability of recall and precision of colour recall as well as the increase in proportion of binding errors, respectively. These changes are likely to impact core symptomatology associated with autism, as perceptual binding and working memory play significant roles in higher-order tasks, such as communication.