title: The Takete-Maluma phenomenon in autism spectrum disorders.
abstract: It has been reported that people tend to preferentially associate phonemes like /m/, /l/, /n/ to curvilinear shapes and phonemes like /t/, /z/, /r/, /k/ to rectilinear shapes. Here we evaluated the performance of children/adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and neurotypical controls in this audiovisual congruency phenomenon. Pairs of visual patterns (curvilinear vs rectilinear) were presented to a group of ASD participants (low- or high-functioning) and a group of age-matched neurotypical controls. Participants were asked to associate each item to non-meaningful phoneme clusters. ASD participants showed a lower proportion of expected association responses than the controls. Within the ASD group the performance varied as a function of the severity of the symptomatology. These data suggest that children/adolescents with ASD show, although at different degrees as a function of the severity of the ASD, lower phonetic-iconic congruency response patterns than neurotypical controls, pointing to poorer multisensory integration capabilities.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences, University of Trento, Rovereto, TN, Italy. valeria.occelli@gmail.com
authors.forename: Valeria
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Occelli
authors.forename: Gianluca
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Esposito
authors.forename: Paola
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Venuti
authors.forename: Giuseppe Maurizio
authors.initials: GM
authors.lastname: Arduino
authors.forename: Massimiliano
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zampini
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001244:Association; D002648:Child; D002659:Child Development Disorders, Pervasive / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D011578:Psycholinguistics / Q000379:methods; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*