Time-based event expectancies in children with Autism spectrum disorder

Here, we studied the time-based event expectancies in children with Autism spectrum disorder. Nine children with Autism spectrum disorders and ten (6–11 years) typically developing children participated. In a choice-response task with two different pre-target intervals, participants had to indicate the left or right direction of a target stimulus. The target was predicted by the duration of the pre-target interval with 80% validity. We found that, in children with Autism spectrum disorder, in contrast to typically developing children, the formation of time-based event expectancies was restricted to the relatively longer pre-target interval. This pattern is rather typical for healthy young adults. These findings indicate that children with Autism spectrum disorder are able to form time-based event expectancies, and that, similar to healthy young adults, longer pre-target intervals enable them to make more optimal temporal predictions.