Research report Reduced multisensory facilitation in persons with autism Olivier Collignon a,b,c, *, Genevie `ve Charbonneau b , Fre ´de ´ric Peters d , Marouane Nassim e , Maryse Lassonde a,b , Franco Lepore b , Laurent Mottron e and Armando Bertone e,f a Centre de Recherche de l’ho ˆpital universitaire Sainte-Justine, Montre ´al, QC, Canada b Centre de Recherche en Neuropsychologie et Cognition (CERNEC), Universite ´ de Montre ´al, QC, Canada c Centre for Mind/Brain Sciences, University of Trento, Italy d Centre de Recherche de l’Institut Universitaire de Ge ´riatrie de Montre ´al, Montre ´al, QC, Canada e Centre d’excellence en Troubles envahissants du de ´veloppement de l’Universite ´ de Montre ´al (CETEDUM), Montre ´al, QC, Canada f School/Applied Child Psychology, Department of Education and Counseling Psychology, McGill University, Montre ´al, QC, Canada article info Article history: Received 24 August 2011 Reviewed 15 November 2011 Revised 7 February 2012 Accepted 8 June 2012 Action editor Mike Anderson Published online xxx Keywords: Autism Multisensory integration Visual search Vision Audition abstract Although the literature concerning auditory and visual perceptual capabilities in the autism spectrum is growing, our understanding of multisensory integration (MSI) is rather limited. In the present study, we assessed MSI in autism by measuring whether partici- pants benefited from an auditory cue presented in synchrony with the color change of a target during a complex visual search task. The synchronous auditory pip typically increases search efficacy ( pip and pop effect), indicative of the beneficial use of sensory input from both modalities. We found that for conditions without auditory information, autistic participants were better at visual search compared to neurotypical participants. Impor- tantly, search efficiency was increased by the presence of auditory pip for neurotypical participants only. The simultaneous occurrence of superior unimodal performance with altered audioevisual integration in autism suggests autonomous sensory processing in this population. ª 2012 Elsevier Srl. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Our perceptual world is made up of events that usually stimulate more than one sense at a given time. The brain must therefore integrate sources of information originating from multiple sensory modalities in order to create a unified and coherent internal representation of our external environment (Stein and Meredith, 1993). This process, referred to as multisensory integration (MSI), ultimately allows us to interact with our surroundings and others in an adaptive manner. It has been previously suggested that atypical MSI may plausibly be the origin for certain characteristic behav- iors in autism (Iarocci and McDonald, 2006; Marco et al., 2011), including the avoidance of overstimulating environments and the focus on repetitive sensory attributes (Lovaas et al., 1979). Major cognitive theories in autism such as the Weak Central Coherence (WCC) theory (Frith and Happe, 1994), the temporal binding deficit hypothesis (Brock et al., 2002) and the * Corresponding author. Universite ´ de Montre ´ al, Centre de Recherche CHU Sainte-Justine, 3175 Chemin de la Co ˆ te Sainte-Catherine, Bureau 590, Montreal, QC H3T 1C5, Canada. E-mail address: olivier.collignon@umontreal.ca (O. Collignon). Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cortex cortex xxx (2012) 1 e7 Please cite this article in press as: Collignon O, et al., Reduced multisensory facilitation in persons with autism, Cortex (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2012.06.001 0010-9452/$ e see front matter ª 2012 Elsevier Srl. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2012.06.001