A review of behavioural and electrophysiological studies on auditory processing and speech perception in autism spectrum disorders

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

“…The observation of equivalent or even impaired pitch processing performance in adolescents with ASD contrasts with the widespread general assumption of enhanced pitch processing sensitivity in ASD (as reviewed by Haesen et al 2011 andO'Connor 2012). A closer look at the literature, however, reveals that surprisingly few studies actually estimated pitch discrimination thresholds for pure tones in ASD.…”

“…During the last decade there has been a growing interest in the study of auditory processing and speech perception in ASD, as evidenced by a recent series of review papers (Bomba and Pang 2004;Haesen et al 2011;Hitoglou et al 2010;Jeste and Nelson 2009;Kujala et al 2013;O'Connor 2012;Ouimet et al 2012;Samson et al 2006). 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). 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).…”

“…It has been suggested that the enhanced auditory spectral processing abilities on the one hand and the reduced temporal, speech and language processing on the other, may reflect atypical hemispheric specialization in individuals with ASD (Fein et al 1984;Haesen et al 2011). In the general population, speech and language processing are largely lateralized to the left hemisphere, a specialization which is already apparent in infancy (e.g., Dehaene-Lambertz et al 2002).…”

The Relationship Between Auditory Processing and Restricted, Repetitive Behaviors in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders

“…To date, there are mixed findings regarding low-level auditory processing abilities in ASD (for a review see Haesen, Boets and Wagemans, 2011;O'Connor, 2012;Samson, Mottron, Jemel, Belin, and Ciocca, 2006). The contradictory reports may be due to the variability in the populations studied.…”