This study purports to bridge the gap in research directed at people with Low Functioning Autism (LFA) by exploring if sensory discrimination ability can be used to assess cognitive functioning in children with LFA. The study was done in two phases: (i) a pilot phase (with 4 male participants; mean age = 3 years 6.5 months)--which tried to…

A portion of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have difficulty acquiring conditional discrimination. However, previous researchers suggested that the discrimination of nonverbal auditory stimuli may be acquired more efficiently (Eikeseth & Hayward, 2009; Uwer, et al., 2002). For example, a child may learn to touch a…

Focuses on auditory fusion (defined in terms of a listerner's ability to distinguish paired acoustic events from single acoustic events) in 3- to 12-year-old children. The subjects listened to 270 pairs of tones controlled for frequency, intensity, and duration. (CM)

Recent studies have suggested that unusual visual processing in autism might stem from enhanced visual discrimination. Although there are also many anecdotal reports of auditory and tactile processing disturbances in autism these have received comparatively little attention. It is possible that the enhanced discrimination ability in vision in…