title: Discrimination of temporal synchrony in intermodal events by children with autism and children with developmental disabilities without autism.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  This project examined the intermodal perception of temporal synchrony in 16 young children (ages 4 to 6 years) with autism compared to a group of children without impairments matched on adaptive age, and a group of children with other developmental disabilities matched on chronological and adaptive age.
  
  
  METHODS
  A preferential looking paradigm was used, where participants viewed non-linguistic, simple linguistic or complex linguistic events on two screens displaying identical video tracks, but one offset from the other by 3 seconds, and with the single audio track matched to only one of the displays.
  
  
  RESULTS
  As predicted, both comparison groups demonstrated significant non-random preferential looking to violations of temporal synchrony with linguistic and non-linguistic stimuli. However, the group with autism showed an impaired, chance level of responding, except when presented with non-linguistic stimuli.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Several explanations are offered for this apparently autism-specific, language-specific pattern of responding to temporal synchrony, and potential developmental sequelae are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. jbebko@yorku.ca
authors.forename: James M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Bebko
authors.forename: Jonathan A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Weiss
authors.forename: Jenny L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Demark
authors.forename: Pamela
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Gomez
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis*; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002658:Developmental Disabilities / Q000453:epidemiology*; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular; D006801:Humans; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology; D008297:Male; D013998:Time Perception; D014743:Videotape Recording