Year-end Sale % OFF 
Abstract
Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) experience challenges with social communication, often involving emotional elements of language. This may stem from underlying auditory processing difficulties, especially when incoming speech is nuanced or complex. This study explored the effects of auditory training on social perception abilities of children with ASD. The training combined use of a remote-microphone hearing system and computerized emotion perception training. At baseline, children with ASD had poorer social communication scores and delayed mismatch negativity (MMN) compared to typically developing children. Behavioral results, measured pre- and post-intervention, revealed increased social perception scores in children with ASD to the extent that they outperformed their typically developing peers post-intervention. Electrophysiology results revealed changes in neural responses to emotional speech stimuli. Post-intervention, mismatch responses of children with ASD more closely resembled their neurotypical peers, with shorter MMN latencies, a significantly heightened P2 wave, and greater differentiation of emotional stimuli, consistent with their improved behavioral results. This study sets the foundation for further investigation into connections between auditory processing difficulties and social perception and communication for individuals with ASD, and provides a promising indication that combining amplified hearing and computer-based targeted social perception training using emotional speech stimuli may have neuro-rehabilitative benefits.
Highlights
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a lifelong, pervasive, neurodevelopmental condition characterized by restrictive, repetitive patterns of behavior and deficits in social language and communication [1]
Overall behavioral results showed that typically developing (TD) and ASD children did exhibit differences in their abilities to identify facial expressions (Affect Naming score), as well as matching facial to vocal emotions (Social Perception Prosody score)
Future work could expand the collection of normative data from TD children so that raw scores from the Advanced Clinical Solutions (ACS) Social Perception [62] test can be standardized for ages younger than 16 years, the current cut off point for available standardized data
Summary
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a lifelong, pervasive, neurodevelopmental condition characterized by restrictive, repetitive patterns of behavior and deficits in social language and communication [1]. A number of researchers have suggested that the core language impairments in ASD reflect problems with language pragmatics [4,5,6,7,8]. Pragmatics, here, refers to the social, emotional, and communicative elements of language, which include nonverbal communicative cues such as prosody—the minimal distinctions in spoken language that convey the speaker’s emotion and intent [9,10]. The perception of prosody is thought to depend on a number of acoustic parameters such as variations in fundamental frequency (pitch), intensity, timbre, and timing [11,12,13,14]. Electrophysiological studies indicate that the human auditory system engages immediately with prosodic cues while processing spoken language [15], and that specific cortical regions respond to variation in affective prosody (i.e., emotion) [16]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
