The effect of cognitive load (CL) on speech recognition has received little attention despite the prevalence of CL in everyday life, e.g., dual-tasking. To assess the effect of CL on the interaction between lexically-mediated and acoustically-mediated processes, we measured the magnitude of the "Ganong effect" (i.e., lexical bias on phoneme…

Investigators have identified delays and differences in cognitive, language, motor, and sensory development in children with Down syndrome (DS). The purpose of this study was to determine the parent-reported frequency of sensory processing issues in children with DS aged 3-10 years, and the parent-reported functional impact of those sensory…

The aim of this study was to investigate the development of multisensory facilitation in primary school-age children under conditions of auditory noise. Motor reaction times and accuracy were recorded from 8-year-olds, 10-year-olds, and adults during auditory, visual, and audiovisual detection tasks. Auditory signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) of 30-,…

Developmental dyslexia is believed to involve a phonological deficit of which the exact properties have not been clearly established. This article presents the findings of a longitudinal case study that suggest that, at least for some people with dyslexia, the fundamental problem involves a disturbance of temporal-spatial ordering abilities. A…

Autism involves various perceptual benefits and deficits, but it is unclear if the disorder also involves anomalous audiovisual integration. To address this issue, we compared the performance of high-functioning adults with autism and matched controls on experiments investigating the audiovisual integration of speech, spatiotemporal relations, and…

Cross-modal illusions such as the McGurk-MacDonald effect have been used to illustrate the automatic, encapsulated nature of multisensory integration. This characterization is based in the widespread assumption that the illusory percept arising from intersensory conflict reflects only the end-product of the multisensory integration process, with…

The ability to predict the effects of actions is necessary to behave properly in our physical and social world. Here, we describe how the ability to predict the consequence of complex gestures can change the way we integrate sight and sound when relevant visual information is missing. Six drummers and six novices were asked to judge audiovisual…

This study aimed to investigate the development of audiovisual integration in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Audiovisual integration was measured using the McGurk effect in children with ASD aged 7-16 years and typically developing children (control group) matched approximately for age, sex, nonverbal ability and verbal ability.…

This dissertation explores the hypothesis that language processing proceeds in "windows" that correspond to representational units, where sensory signals are integrated according to time-scales that correspond to the rate of the input. To investigate universal mechanisms, a comparison of signed and spoken languages is necessary. Underlying the…

The musical priming paradigm has shown facilitated processing for tonally related over less-related targets. However, the congruence between tonal relatedness and the psychoacoustical properties of music challenges cognitive interpretations of the involved processes. Our goal was to show that cognitive expectations (based on listeners' tonal…

Pre-linguistic sensory deficits, especially in "temporal" processing, have been implicated in developmental language impairment (LI). However, recent evidence has been equivocal with data suggesting problems in the spectral domain. The present study examined event-related potential (ERP) measures of auditory sensory temporal and spectral…

Background: It has frequently been suggested that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have deficits in auditory-visual (AV) sensory integration. Studies of language integration have mostly used non-word syllables presented in congruent and incongruent AV combinations and demonstrated reduced influence of visual speech in individuals…

The aim of this study was to provide evidence that memory and perceptual processing are underpinned by the same mechanisms. Specifically, the authors conducted 3 experiments that emphasized the sensory aspect of memory traces. They examined their predictions with a short-term priming paradigm based on 2 distinct phases: a learning phase consisting…

The purpose of this study was to explore the sensory profile of young children with ASD compared to young children with other developmental delays (DD) at first ASD assessment. Results found that young children with ASD had more tactile and taste/smell sensitivities and difficulties with auditory filtering than young children with other DD.…

Background: Integration of information from multiple sensory sources is an important prerequisite for successful social behavior, especially during face-to-face conversation. It has been suggested that communicative impairments among individuals with pervasive developmental disorders (PDD) might be caused by an inability to integrate synchronously…