Sensory processing in autism

This event is part of a series of Psychology seminars that regularly occurs during the Autumn and Spring terms.

Sensory processing differences are experienced by most autistic people and have a significant impact on daily life and mental wellbeing. Cathy Manning will talk about two threads of work that aim to better understand sensory processing in autistic people.

The first of these threads used a combination of computational modelling and EEG to pinpoint the stages of sensory processing that differ in autistic participants compared to non-autistic participants during visual perceptual decision-making tasks. The second thread investigated autistic adult's lived experiences of sensory processing in public spaces. Cathy concludes that group differences in visual perceptual tasks in the lab tend to be very subtle, despite the large differences in reactivity experienced in everyday life.

Cathy will then talk about a new project investigating visual discomfort in autistic and non-autistic children where she plans to bring these threads of work together by applying the tight stimulus control from perceptual studies to better understand subjective reactivity. This work will help inform better recommendations for the design of autism-inclusive environments and visual resources.