Speech Discrimination Difficulties in High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder Are Likely Independent of Auditory Hypersensitivity

Abstract

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), characterized by impaired communication skills and repetitive behaviors, can also result in differences in sensory perception. Individuals with ASD often perform normally in simple auditory tasks but poorly compared to typically developed (TD) individuals on complex auditory tasks like discriminating speech from complex background noise. A common trait of individuals with ASD is hypersensitivity to auditory stimulation. No studies to our knowledge consider whether hypersensitivity to sounds is related to differences in speech-in-noise discrimination. We provide novel evidence that individuals with high-functioning ASD show poor performance compared to TD individuals in a speech-in-noise discrimination task with an attentionally demanding background noise, but not in a purely energetic noise. Further, we demonstrate in our small sample that speech-hypersensitivity does not appear to predict performance in the speech-in-noise task. The findings support the argument that an attentional deficit, rather than a perceptual deficit, affects the ability of individuals with ASD to discriminate speech from background noise. Finally, we piloted a novel questionnaire that measures difficulty hearing in noisy environments, and sensitivity to non-verbal and verbal sounds. Psychometric analysis using 128 TD participants provided novel evidence for a difference in sensitivity to non-verbal and verbal sounds, and these findings were reinforced by participants with ASD who also completed the questionnaire. The study was limited by a small and high-functioning sample of participants with ASD. Future work could test larger sample sizes and include lower-functioning ASD participants.

Hiper-responsividade auditiva no transtorno do espectro autista, terminologias e mecanismos fisiológicos envolvidos: revisão sistemática

“…-There was no difference between groups for habituation onset, but once the process began, it was slower in GASD and in GASD with SOR, it was slower for time when compared to CG GASD 12 Dunlop et al (2016) (8) AHR GASD =16 20-52 years old CG =31 19 years old 1. Auditory Attention and Distress Questionnaire…”

“…Studies investigating auditory sensory disturbances in ASD have two strands. The first strand aimed at a better understanding of the mechanisms of temporal listening and speech perception in noise (7,8) ; the second one aimed at analyzing the response during presentation of a given acoustic stimulus, characterized by a disproportionate behavior according to sound characteristics (DBS) (9) .…”

“…In the first strand, the studies showed that individuals with ASD presented longer responses to the perception of temporal variations of acoustic stimuli, as well as inferior results in conditions of hearing in the face of noise (8) . These results characterize the presence of auditory processing disorder (10) , a clinical entity that is also commonly described in other conditions that affect development, such as dyslexia, specific language disorder, dysfluency and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), among others (11,12) .…”

“…The second strand seeks to characterize, understand and investigate the occurrence of DBS, which is named with different terms, being the most common auditory hypersensitivity (AHS) (8,13) and hyperacusis (HPA) (14)(15)(16)(17) . The existence of divergence in the nomenclature to designate DBS in ASD has already been observed and previously weighted (9,18) , as well as the repercussions that such designations generate in the information conflict for the way they were studied (9) .…”

“…According to the same authors, auditory sensory disorder has a lower frequency than visual and proprioceptive, but it is interesting to note that while the frequency of these last two modalities increased according to the severity of ASD, auditory frequency remained stable (28) . The occurrence of DBS in ASD is heterogeneous, between 16.2% and 69.0%, whether the different terminologies HSA, HPA and auditory hyper-responsiveness (AHR) are computed (8,13,14,29) . It is important to note that the literature describes the occurrence of HPA in 1.9 to 9.2% of adults and elderly (30) , and in 3.4% of children's population, all without ASD (26) .…”