Associations Between Interoceptive Cognition and Age in Autism Spectrum Disorder and Typical Development.

Interoceptive awareness is linked to emotional and social cognition, which are impaired in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It is unknown how this ability is associated with age in either typical or atypical development. We used a standard test of interoceptive accuracy (IA) to investigate these questions in children and adults with and without ASD. Perceived number of heartbeats over 4 time intervals was compared with actual heart rate to determine IA. Effects of group, age, IQ, heart rate, and mental counting ability on accuracy were assessed using multiple regression. Post hoc correlations were performed to clarify significant interactions. Age was unrelated to IA in both groups when IQ ≥115. When IQ <115, this relationship was positive in typical development and negative in ASD. These results suggest that cognitive ability moderates the effect of age on IA differently in autism and typical development.

The associations between multisensory temporal processing and symptoms of schizophrenia.

Recent neurobiological accounts of schizophrenia have included an emphasis on changes in sensory processing. These sensory and perceptual deficits can have a cascading effect onto higher-level cognitive processes and clinical symptoms. One form of sensory dysfunction that has been consistently observed in schizophrenia is altered temporal processing. In this study, we investigated temporal processing within and across the auditory and visual modalities in individuals with schizophrenia (SCZ) and age-matched healthy controls. Individuals with SCZ showed auditory and visual temporal processing abnormalities, as well as multisensory temporal processing dysfunction that extended beyond that attributable to unisensory processing dysfunction. Most importantly, these multisensory temporal deficits were associated with the severity of hallucinations. This link between atypical multisensory temporal perception and clinical symptomatology suggests that clinical symptoms of schizophrenia may be at least partly a result of cascading effects from (multi)sensory disturbances. These results are discussed in terms of underlying neural bases and the possible implications for remediation.