Auditory discrimination and auditory sensory behaviours in autism spectrum disorders

Jones, Catherine R. G.; Happé, Francesca; Baird, Gillian; Simonoff, Emily; Marsden, Anita; Tregay, Jenifer; Phillips, Rebecca; Goswami, Usha; Thomson, Jennifer M.; Charman, Tony

doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2009.06.015

Cited by 218 publications

(246 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…The majority of studies investigated more advanced pitch processing aspects like categorization, labelling, memory or disembedding, and they often used much more complex auditory stimuli or speech stimuli (e.g., Foxton et al 2003;Heaton 2003;Heaton et al 2005Heaton et al , 2008bJärvinen-Pasley and Heaton 2007;Järvinen-Pasley et al 2008a, b;Mottron et al 2000). Only three studies used a similar adaptive staircase procedure (as we did) to assess pure tone pitch processing (Bhatara et al 2013;Bonnel et al 2010;Jones et al 2009). The first psychoacoustic evidence for enhanced pitch discrimination of pure tones was provided by Bonnel et al (2003), who observed superior pitch discrimination in adolescents with autism and in adults meeting full criteria for autism but not in those with Asperger syndrome (Bonnel et al 2010).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The first psychoacoustic evidence for enhanced pitch discrimination of pure tones was provided by Bonnel et al (2003), who observed superior pitch discrimination in adolescents with autism and in adults meeting full criteria for autism but not in those with Asperger syndrome (Bonnel et al 2010). Partial support for this finding was provided by Jones et al (2009), who found no differences in frequency discrimination at the group level, but who identified a subgroup of adolescents with ASD and delayed language onset who showed exceptional frequency categorization. Interestingly, the single study that also applied a three-alternative forced choice adaptive staircase paradigm (as we did), obtained similar evidence for impaired frequency discrimination in a mixed sample of adolescents with autism and Asperger syndrome (Bhatara et al 2013).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One of the most prominent observations concerns the evidence for enhanced pitch perception in children on the autistic spectrum and in a subgroup of adolescents and adults with ASD, especially those with early developmental language delay and language-related difficulties (O'Connor 2012). Superior pitch processing has been established regardless of stimulus complexity (e.g., for pure tones, complex tones, contours, nonwords, words and sentences) using a variety of psychophysical tasks (e.g., identification, discrimination, categorization, memory and labeling) (e.g., Bonnel et al 2003Bonnel et al , 2010Heaton 2005;Heaton et al 2008a, b, c;Järvinen-Pasley and Heaton 2007;Jones et al 2009;O'Riordan and Passetti 2006;Stanutz et al 2014). The majority of research using event-related potentials (ERP) also revealed enhanced neural detection of frequency changes in ASD at the pre-attentive level (using mismatch negativity or MMN) (e.g., Ferri et al 2003;Gomot et al 2002;Kujala et al 2007; but see Jansson-Verkasalo et al 2003; see Haesen et al 2011 for an extensive recent review of the psychophysical and electrophysiological literature on auditory processing in ASD).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Relevant is also the increased prevalence of absolute pitch and musical savants in the ASD population (e.g., DePape et al 2012;Heaton et al 2008a, b, c;Miller 1989;Mottron et al 2013) and the increased prevalence of autistic traits among possessors of absolute pitch (e.g., Dohn et al 2012). The occurrence of this superior pitch processing contrasts with the inferior temporal processing abilities in ASD (such as impaired gap-in-noise detection, duration discrimination, temporalenvelope processing, temporal order judgement; e.g., Alcántara et al 2012;Bhatara et al 2013;Kwakye et al 2011;Lepisto et al 2005Lepisto et al , 2006Samson et al 2011; but see Jones et al 2009;Kasai et al 2005) and the evidence of speech perception impairments (Alcántara et al 2004;Bhatara et al 2013;Groen et al 2009) and generally delayed speech and language development (e.g., Anderson et al 2007). Speech perception has been shown to be particularly impaired while presented in noise with temporal dips (Alcántara et al 2004;Groen et al 2009) or in a competing talker condition (Alcántara et al 2004;Bhatara et al 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Tenmonth-olds, however, can generalize across speaker sex, suggesting that with development infants can more readily ignore irrelevant absolute pitch cues in speech and consequently build up more abstract higher-order speech representations (Houston et al 1998). Against this background, it should not be too surprising that a substantial proportion of individuals with ASD shows early developmental language delay as well as broader linguistic impairments later in life, and that these are exactly the individuals who are most prone to present superior acoustic processing of pitch (e.g., Bonnel et al 2010;Heaton et al 2008c;Jones et al 2009). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Fragile Spectral and Temporal Auditory Processing in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Early Language Delay

Boets

Verhoeven

Wouters

et al. 2014

J Autism Dev Disord

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We investigated low-level auditory spectral and temporal processing in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and early language delay compared to matched typically developing controls. Auditory measures were designed to target right versus left auditory cortex processing (i.e. frequency discrimination and slow amplitude modulation (AM) detection versus gap-in-noise detection and faster AM detection), and to pinpoint the task and stimulus characteristics underlying putative superior spectral processing in ASD. We observed impaired frequency discrimination in the ASD group and suggestive evidence of poorer temporal resolution as indexed by gapin-noise detection thresholds. These findings question the evidence of enhanced spectral sensitivity in ASD and do not support the hypothesis of superior right and inferior left hemispheric auditory processing in ASD.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Fragile Spectral and Temporal Auditory Processing in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Early Language Delay

Boets

Verhoeven

Wouters

et al. 2014

J Autism Dev Disord

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The association between childhood autistic traits and adolescent psychotic experiences is explained by general neuropsychiatric problems

Cederlöf

Pettersson

Sariaslan

et al. 2015

American J of Med Genetics Pt B

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Studies suggest associations between childhood autistic traits and adolescent psychotic experiences. However, recent research suggests that a general neuropsychiatric problems factor predicts adverse outcomes better than specific diagnostic entities. To examine if the alleged association between autistic traits and psychotic experiences could rather be explained by a general neuropsychiatric problems factor comprising symptoms of ADHD, tic disorder, developmental coordination disorder, and learning disorder, we conducted a prospective cohort study based on the Child and Adolescent Twin Study in Sweden. In addition, we examined the genetic and environmental influences on the associations. A total of 9,282 twins with data on childhood autistic traits and other neuropsychiatric problems, and follow-up data on psychotic experiences at ages 15 and/or 18 years were included. First, psychotic experiences were regressed on autistic traits and second, the general neuropsychiatric problems factor was added to the model. Auditory hallucinations were analyzed separately from the other psychotic experiences. Finally, twin analyses were employed to disentangle genetic from environmental influences in the observed associations. Replicating prior research, significant associations were found between autistic traits in childhood and auditory hallucinations at ages 15 and 18. However, after controlling for the general neuropsychiatric problems factor, the associations between autistic traits and auditory hallucinations disappeared, whereas the association between the general neuropsychiatric problems factor and auditory hallucinations persisted after controlling for autistic traits. Twin analyses revealed that the association between the general neuropsychiatric problems factor and auditory hallucinations was driven by shared genetic influences. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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Dystrophic Serotonin Axons in Postmortem Brains from Young Autism Patients

Azmitia

Singh

Hou

et al. 2011

The Anatomical Record

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Autism causes neuropathological changes in varied anatomical loci. A coherent neural mechanism to explain the spectrum of autistic symptomatology has not been proposed because most anatomical researchers focus on point-to-point functional neural systems (e.g. auditory, social networks) rather than considering global chemical neural systems. Serotonergic neurons have a global innervation pattern. Their cell bodies are found in the midbrain but they project their axons throughout the neural axis beginning in the fetal brain. This global system is implicated in autism by animal models and by biochemical, imaging, pharmacological, and genetics studies. However, no anatomical studies of the 5-HT innervation of autistic donors have been reported. Our review presents immunocytochemical evidence of an increase in 5-HT axons in post-mortem brain tissue from autism donors aged 2.8 to 29 years relative to controls. This increase is observed in the principle ascending fiber bundles of the medial and lateral forebrain bundles, and in the innervation density of the amygdala and the piriform, superior temporal, and parahippocampal cortices. In autistic donors eight years of age and up, several types of dystrophic 5-HT axons were seen in the termination fields. One class of these dystrophic axons, the thick heavily stained axons, was not seen in the brains of patients with neurodegenerative diseases. These findings provide morphological evidence for the involvement of serotonin neurons in the early etiology of autism, and suggest a diet therapy may be effective to blunt serotonin’s trophic actions during early brain development in children.

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Auditory discrimination and auditory sensory behaviours in autism spectrum disorders

Cited by 218 publications

References 66 publications

Fragile Spectral and Temporal Auditory Processing in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Early Language Delay

Fragile Spectral and Temporal Auditory Processing in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Early Language Delay

The association between childhood autistic traits and adolescent psychotic experiences is explained by general neuropsychiatric problems

Dystrophic Serotonin Axons in Postmortem Brains from Young Autism Patients

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