Event-related brain potential correlates of the processing of novel visual and auditory information in autism

Courchesne, Eric; Lincoln, Alan J.; Kilman, Beverly A.; Galambos, Róbert

doi:10.1007/bf01837899

Cited by 173 publications

(96 citation statements)

References 45 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Further, neither the acoustic complexity nor the ''speechness'' quality of these stimuli affected the sensory discrimination of pitch in the autism group, as shown by their normal MMN amplitudes. This finding is in good agreement with the generally good behavioral performance on auditory target (acoustically simple and complex) detection tasks by adults and adolescents with autism (6,7,11) and with the normal behavioral pitch discrimination abilities in adults with autism (18).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

“…They include abnormalities in spontaneous looking (3), focused attention (5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11), and voluntary shifting of attention (12)(13)(14). Courchesne et al (12) proposed that the majority of the attentional deficits observed in autism might be caused by a cerebellar dysfunction that slows down the adaptation of the neural systems to the constantly changing neural processing demands.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Speech–sound-selective auditory impairment in children with autism: They can perceive but do not attend

Čėponiené

Lepistö

Шестакова

et al. 2003

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

349

273

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In autism, severe abnormalities in social behavior coexist with aberrant attention and deficient language. In the attentional domain, attention to people and socially relevant stimuli is impaired the most. Because socially meaningful stimulus events are physically complex, a deficiency in sensory processing of complex stimuli has been suggested to contribute to aberrant attention and language in autism. This study used event-related brain potentials (ERP) to examine the sensory and early attentional processing of sounds of different complexity in high-functioning children with autism. Acoustically matched simple tones, complex tones, and vowels were presented in separate oddball sequences, in which a repetitive ''standard'' sound was occasionally replaced by an infrequent ''deviant'' sound differing from the standard in frequency (by 10%). In addition to sensory responses, deviant sounds elicited an ERP index of automatic sound-change discrimination, the mismatch negativity, and an ERP index of attentional orienting, the P3a. The sensory sound processing was intact in the highfunctioning children with autism and was not affected by sound complexity or ''speechness.'' In contrast, their involuntary orienting was affected by stimulus nature. It was normal to both simpleand complex-tone changes but was entirely abolished by vowel changes. These results demonstrate that, first, auditory orienting deficits in autism cannot be explained by sensory deficits and, second, that orienting deficit in autism might be speech-sound specific.A utism (1) is a severely debilitating developmental disorder, characterized by aberrant social skills, deficient language, abnormal attention, stereotyped repetitive behaviors, and often also mental retardation.One of the components of the social communication deficits in autism is peculiar attentional behavior. Individuals with autism show attentional preference to objects over people and a lack of a drive to communicate (2). Consistent with this, Swettenham et al. (3) found that 20-month-old infants with autistic features made significantly fewer attention shifts than did their controls from person to person and between a person and an object. They also spent more time looking at objects and less time looking at people. Further, 5-year-old children with autism oriented more poorly to social (both speech and nonspeech) than to nonsocial stimuli (4). Their impaired orienting to social stimuli correlated with the impairment of joint attention, one of the key features of autism.The neurofunctional deficits underlying this pattern of behavior are not yet understood, although recent research revealed disorders in many aspects of attentional behavior in autism. They include abnormalities in spontaneous looking (3), focused attention (5-11), and voluntary shifting of attention (12)(13)(14). Courchesne et al. (12) proposed that the majority of the attentional deficits observed in autism might be caused by a cerebellar dysfunction that slows down the adaptation of the neural systems to the const...

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Speech–sound-selective auditory impairment in children with autism: They can perceive but do not attend

Čėponiené

Lepistö

Шестакова

et al. 2003

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

349

273

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Specifically, autistic children may have a limited ability to process novel information (Courchesne et al, 1985). They have smaller and later P300s than healthy children.…”

Section: Autistic Disordermentioning

confidence: 99%

Event-related potentials in clinical research: Guidelines for eliciting, recording, and quantifying mismatch negativity, P300, and N400

Duncan

Barry

Connolly

et al. 2009

Clinical Neurophysiology

1,007

845

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…The P300 wave, in particular, has been studied in a variety of populations suffering from some obvious developmental disorder or thought to be at risk for developing some disorder. Populations studied include children with ADD (18); children with infantile autism (19); the offspring of schizophrenic parents (20); the children of alcoholic parents (21); and adults who were diagnosed as dyslexic, with or without concomitant attention deficit disorder, as children (Duncan, personal communication agnosed as not having ADD as children had normal voltages of the P300 wave; however, the late components of their ERPs (Fig. 4) appear to be asymmetrical.…”

Section: Attention-information Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Behavioral and psychophysiological markers of disordered attention.

Mirsky

1987

Environ Health Perspect

119

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Behavioral and psychophysiological assays provide the most sensitive indication of whether a presumed neurotoxin has a deleterious effect on the nervous system. The effects of lead on the nervous system are strongly suggestive that this agent can produce disturbances in attention; moreover, there are clinical reports of such effects. The action of lead is also manifest in behaviors described as "hyperactive," or reflecting "minimal brain damage." The core symptom in both disorders is probably impairment in attention. The recent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-III) of the American Psychiatric Association uses the term Attention Deficit Disorder to replace such terms as hyperactivity and minimal brain damage. Prior studies of the behavioral toxicity of lead may have used inadequate or incomplete assays of attention; this could in part account for the variability in outcomes. Recent research on attention suggests that it is a complex behavior consisting of a number of elements or components, each of which may be in part dependent upon a different region of the central nervous system. Behavioral assays should examine the components of attentive behavior using tests which are sensitive to the different elements. It is recommended that psychophysiological assays (using cognitive event-related potentials), although more difficult and costly to implement, be used as well. These assays may provide a more dynamic view of altered information processing in the brain and help to localize and characterize the behavioral impairment.

show abstract

Event-related brain potential correlates of the processing of novel visual and auditory information in autism

Cited by 173 publications

References 45 publications

Speech–sound-selective auditory impairment in children with autism: They can perceive but do not attend

Speech–sound-selective auditory impairment in children with autism: They can perceive but do not attend

Event-related potentials in clinical research: Guidelines for eliciting, recording, and quantifying mismatch negativity, P300, and N400

Behavioral and psychophysiological markers of disordered attention.

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About