Sensory responsiveness and alexithymia in autistic children and young people considered within the predictive coding framework

Atypical sensory responsivity in autism spectrum disorder have been noted since the first descriptions of the condition in 1943. However, anomalous sensory processing has only been recognised as a diagnostic criterion for autism since the latest revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 2013 (DSM-5). Atypical sensory responsivity has been linked to social and communication difficulties in autistic children and adults. Additionally, alexithymia – which refers to difficulties in recognizing/ distinguishing bodily states associated with emotions- is found to co-occur with autism, potentially impacting self-awareness and empathy towards others. It has been suggested that differences in sensory responsivity in autism can be at least partially explained by the Predictive Coding Framework (PCF) which proposes that anomalous sensory responsivity reflects faulty updating of the brain’s ‘best guess’ as to incoming information. By this account, anomalous sensory responsivity should be highly correlated with other core features of autism. The current research investigates sensory responsiveness and social and communication anomalies in autistic children and young people. Sixty-one parents/guardians of autistic and neurotypical (NT) children and young people participated in this research. Parents were invited to answer four online scales relating to their child’s sensory, social and communication, and alexithymia traits. We find a significant difference between the autism and NT groups’ performances on all four scales. Furthermore, hypo-responsiveness and sensory seeking is correlated with core features of autism and restricted interests and repetitive behaviour, and hyper-responsiveness is correlated with core features of autism, alexithymia, and restricted interests and repetitive behaviour for the autism group but not the NT group. These findings concur with previous research showing that autistic children and young people have greater social and communication atypicalities relating to sensory responses than reported in neurotypical children and young people. It could be suggested that comorbid alexithymia can explain some of the social atypicalities experienced by autistic children. To conclude, it is hypothesised that differences in sensory responses are due to an altered predictive coding framework. A greater emphasis on incoming sensory information and aberrant predictive ability could give rise to hyper-responsivity, hypo-responsivity, and sensory seeking responses in autistic children and young people.