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Being socially uninterested versus not having social prediction skills: The impact of multisensory integration deficits on social skills in autism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 July 2019

Giuseppe Riva
Affiliation:
Centro Studi e Ricerche di Psicologia della Comunicazione, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, 20123 Milan, Italy. giuseppe.riva@unicatt.itdaniele.dilernia@gmail.com Applied Technology for Neuro-Psychology Laboratory, Istituto Auxologico Italiano (IRCCS), 20100 Milan, Italy
Daniele Di Lernia
Affiliation:
Centro Studi e Ricerche di Psicologia della Comunicazione, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, 20123 Milan, Italy. giuseppe.riva@unicatt.itdaniele.dilernia@gmail.com
Antonios Dakanalis
Affiliation:
Department of Medicine and Surgery, Università degli Studi di Milano Bicocca, 20126 Milan, Italy. antonios.dakanalis@unimib.it Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, 6-27100 Pavia, Italy.

Abstract

Jaswal & Akhtar in their target article convincingly argue that subjects with autism do not have diminished social motivation. However, they still recognize that autistic people behave socially in an unusual way. Why? Here we suggest that these behaviours are the results of a multisensory integration deficit. Viewed from this perspective, the assumption that autistic people's unusual behaviours indicate diminished social motivation has to be replaced by the one that they have diminished social prediction skills.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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