Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p>Visual efficiency may vary through time according to the oscillatory cycles of its underlying neural networks. In autism, pattern recognition shows indications of earlier development and/or superior efficiency. This study aims to characterize and compare the temporal profiles of visual efficiency in object and word recognition tasks in autistic vs typically developing adults. Target images were overlaid with white noise and displayed for 200 ms. The ratio of signal (i.e. target image) to noise (i.e. white noise) varied randomly throughout exposure. Classification images representing the variations of processing efficiency in the time-frequency domain were calculated based on the correlation between response accuracy and the temporal sampling functions. Response accuracy was similar across groups. Strong variations in the efficiency of visual encoding according to time and the frequency spectrum of signal-to-noise ratio oscillations occurred in both tasks. Significant group differences in these temporal patterns are observed in each task, which are stable across participants. A subset of temporal features of processing efficiency reliably discriminates between groups regardless of the task performed. Variations of processing efficiency as a function of time and of the frequency spectrum of SNR oscillations in the stimulus may differ in autism for non-social categories of visual information.</p>