Sensory perception in autism: What can we learn?

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder of unknown etiology. Recently, there has been a growing interest in sensory processing in autism as a core phenotype. However, basic questions remain unanswered. Here, we review the major findings and models of perception in autism and point to methodological issues that have led to conflicting results. We show that popular models of perception in autism, such as the reduced prior hypothesis, cannot explain the many and varied findings. To resolve these issues, we point to the benefits of using rigorous psychophysical methods to study perception. We advocate for perceptual models that provide a detailed explanation of behavior while also taking into account factors such as context, learning and attention. Furthermore, we demonstrate the importance of tracking changes over development to reveal the causal pathways and compensatory mechanisms. Finally, we propose a developmental perceptual narrowing account of the condition.