ArticleNature neuroscience2017
Adults with autism overestimate the volatility of the sensory environment.
Article in Nature neuroscience, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 217 papers, 6 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
217 citing papers in PubMed, 6 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 496 citations in OpenAlex.
- Auditory Sensitivity in Autism: A Systematic Review of Mismatch Negativity and Mismatch Field Responses.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2026Pooled it
- A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Empirical Evidence for the Simple Bayesian Model of Autism.Neuropsychology review · 2026Pooled it
- Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Mismatch Negativity in Autism: Insights Into Predictive Mechanisms.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2025Pooled it
- The relationships between anxiety, psychotic-like experiences and autism: a systematic review.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Pooled it
- Disrupted Dorsal Mid-Insula Activation During Interoception Across Psychiatric Disorders.The American journal of psychiatry · 2021Pooled it
- Prediction in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review of Empirical Evidence.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2021Pooled it
- An examination of active inference in autistic adults using immersive virtual reality.Scientific reports · 2021Trial
- The Computational, Pharmacological, and Physiological Determinants of Sensory Learning under Uncertainty.Current biology : CB · 2021Trial
- A Reliable Effect of Alexithymia, but Not Autism, on Placebo Hypoalgesia.Autism : the international journal of research and practice · 2026Article
- Prediction and Prediction Error in Autism: A Meta-Analysis of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Results.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2026Article
- Counting, Cardinality and Conservation in Autistic Children.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2026Article
- Perceptual meta-uncertainty reveals enhanced calibration of sensory confidence in autism.Science advances · 2026Article
- A Dual Prediction Error Populations Model of Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders: Bridging NMDA Hypofunction and Gain Hyperfunction.Schizophrenia bulletin · 2026Article
- Pain Expectation in Individuals With High Autistic Traits: Decision-Evaluation Processes and Oxytocin Modulation.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Article
- Inferring the causes of noise from binary outcomes: A normative theory of learning under uncertainty.Psychological review · 2026Article
- Norms of Conversation: Autistic and Neurotypical Judgments of Conversational Coherence.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2026Article
- Predicting emotional valence in autism: a preregistered study in the Bayesian Brain framework.Molecular autism · 2026Article
- Belief updating in uncertain environments is differentially sensitive to reward and punishment learning: Evidence from ERP.iScience · 2026Article
- Neurophysiological Evidence for Reduced Use of Prior Sound Patterns to Shape Speech Processing in Autism.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Dissociating volatility and stochasticity reveals transdiagnostic computational signatures of psychopathology.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
157 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Insistence on sameness and intolerance of change are among the diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but little research has addressed how people with ASD represent and respond to environmental change. Here, behavioral and pupillometric measurements indicated that adults with ASD are less surprised than neurotypical adults when their expectations are violated, and decreased surprise is predictive of greater symptom severity. A hierarchical Bayesian model of learning suggested that in ASD, a tendency to overlearn about volatility in the face of environmental change drives a corresponding reduction in learning about probabilistically aberrant events, thus putatively rendering these events less surprising. Participant-specific modeled estimates of surprise about environmental conditions were linked to pupil size in the ASD group, thus suggesting heightened noradrenergic responsivity in line with compromised neural gain. This study offers insights into the behavioral, algorithmic and physiological mechanisms underlying responses to environmental volatility in ASD.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.