Autistic Traits and Temporal Integration of Auditory and Visual Stimuli in the General Population: The Role of Imagination

Autistic individuals experience temporal integration difficulties in some sensory modalities that may be related to imagination difficulties. In this study, we tested the hypotheses that among Japanese university students in the general population, (1) higher autistic traits and (2) greater imagination difficulties are associated with lower performance in tasks requiring temporal integration. Two tasks were used to assess their temporal integration abilities: a speech-in-noise test using noise with temporal dips in the auditory modality and a slit-viewing task in the visual modality. The results showed that low performance in the speech-in-noise test was related to autistic traits and some aspects of imagination difficulties, whereas the slit-viewing task was related to neither autistic traits nor imagination difficulties. The ability to temporally integrate fragments of auditory information is expected to be associated with performance in perceiving speech in noise with temporal dips. The difficulties in perceiving sensory information as a single unified percept using priors may cause difficulties in temporally integrating auditory information and perceiving speech in noise. Furthermore, the structural equation modeling suggests that imagination difficulties are linked to difficulties in perceiving speech in noise with temporal dips, which links to social impairments.