Abstract
When acoustic signals from different sound sources are mixed upon arrival at the ears, the auditory system organizes these acoustic elements by their features. This study shows that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) performed better in terms of hearing a target sequence among distractors that had similar spectral uncertainties. Their superior performance in this task indicates an enhanced discrimination between auditory streams with the same spectral uncertainties but different spectro-temporal details. The enhanced discrimination of acoustic components may be related to the absence of the automatic grouping of acoustic components with the same features, which results in difficulties in speech perception in a noisy environment. On the other hand, the ASD group and the control group had similar performance in hearing a target sequence among distractors that had different spatial cues defined by interaural intensity differences.
Highlights
25jittered monotic non-jittered monotic jittered diotic non-jittered diotic found in ASD8,9
The follow-up ANOVAs showed that the factor Spectral Uncertainty and the interaction between Spectral Uncertainty and Group was significant for the monotic conditions but not for the diotic conditions, and the factors Spatial Cues and Group and the interaction between them were all significant for the jittered conditions but the factor Spatial Cues was the only significant one for the non-jittered conditions
This study showed that both the Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) group and the control group were capable of segregating the target and the masker that carried different spatial information
Summary
25jittered monotic non-jittered monotic jittered diotic non-jittered diotic found in ASD8,9. The target sequence always had jittered frequencies and was sent only to the right ear. The maskers were sent to the right ear, and the target and maskers shared the same spatial cues. The maskers were sent to both ears, and the target and maskers had different spatial cues. Listeners should perform better under the non-jittered conditions than under the jittered conditions if they can segregate acoustic signals carrying different spectral uncertainties, and they should perform better under the diotic conditions than under the monotic conditions if they can segregate acoustic signals carrying different spatial cues. If the participants with ASD did not group acoustic signals with similar spectral uncertainties automatically, their performance for the jittered condition should be better than that of the control group
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