Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Atypicalities in sensory perception are observed in individuals diagnosed with ASD and ADHD but have rarely beencontrasted in experimental studies. In the visual domain, superior performance on visual search tasks and hypersensitivity toflickering lights have been cited as evidence of unusual sensory profiles.To measure a reliable visual response, black-and-white checkerboards were presented under free-viewing conditions to threegroups of 10-month-olds: siblings of children with ASD (N=47), ADHD (N=21) and controls (N=18). Continuous EEG wasrecorded and VEPs time-locked to checkerboards presentation computed.Analysis of VEPs amplitude and latency revealed statistically significant group differences in the first 200ms post-stimulusonset. Early components were enhanced in amplitude (P100) and delayed in latency (P100-N100) in at-risk infants comparedto controls (p<.05).Atypical VEPs to low-level information might index a domain-general aberration in at-risk populations. The nature of thisatypicality will be further investigated by analyzing its association with background EEG.