Reducing Information’s Speed Improves Verbal Cognition and Behavior in Autism: A 2-Cases Report
According to the temporal theory of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), abstract
audiovisual changes in environment, particularly those linked to facial and
verbal language, are often too fast to be faced, perceived, and/or interpreted
online by many children with ASD, which could help explain their facial,
verbal, and/or socioemotional interaction impairments. Our goal here was
to test for the first time the impact of slowed-down audiovisual information
on verbal cognition and behavior in 2 boys with ASD and verbal delay. Using
15 experimental sessions during 4 months, both boys were presented with
various stimuli (eg, pictures, words, sentences, cartoons) and were then
asked questions or given instructions regarding stimuli. The audiovisual
stimuli and instructions/questions were presented on a computer's screen
and were always displayed twice: at real-time speed (RTS) and at sloweddown speed (SDS) using the software Logiral. We scored the boys’ verbal
cognition performance (ie, ability to understand questions/instructions
and answer them verbally/nonverbally) and their behavioral reactions
(ie, attention, verbal/nonverbal communication, social reciprocity), and
analyzed the effects of speed and order of the stimuli presentation on these
factors. According to the results, both participants exhibited significant
improvements in verbal cognition performance with SDS presentation
compared with RTS presentation, and they scored better with RTS
presentation when having SDS presentation before rather than after RTS
presentation. Behavioral reactions were also improved in SDS conditions
compared with RTS conditions. This initial evidence of a positive impact of
slowed-down audiovisual information on verbal cognition should be tested
in a large cohort of children with ASD and associated speech/language
impairments.