Individuals with autism spectrum disorder are impaired in absolute but not relative pitch and duration matching in speech and song imitation

Abstract

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often exhibit atypical imitation. However, few studies have identified clear quantitative characteristics of vocal imitation in ASD. This study investigated imitation of speech and song in English‐speaking individuals with and without ASD and its modulation by age. Participants consisted of 25 autistic children and 19 autistic adults, who were compared to 25 children and 19 adults with typical development matched on age, gender, musical training, and cognitive abilities. The task required participants to imitate speech and song stimuli with varying pitch and duration patterns. Acoustic analyses of the imitation performance suggested that individuals with ASD were worse than controls on absolute pitch and duration matching for both speech and song imitation, although they performed as well as controls on relative pitch and duration matching. Furthermore, the two groups produced similar numbers of pitch contour, pitch interval‐, and time errors. Across both groups, sung pitch was imitated more accurately than spoken pitch, whereas spoken duration was imitated more accurately than sung duration. Children imitated spoken pitch more accurately than adults when it came to speech stimuli, whereas age showed no significant relationship to song imitation. These results reveal a vocal imitation deficit across speech and music domains in ASD that is specific to absolute pitch and duration matching. This finding provides evidence for shared mechanisms between speech and song imitation, which involves independent implementation of relative versus absolute features. Lay Summary Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often exhibit atypical imitation of actions and gestures. Characteristics of vocal imitation in ASD remain unclear. By comparing speech and song imitation, this study shows that individuals with ASD have a vocal imitative deficit that is specific to absolute pitch and duration matching, while performing as well as controls on relative pitch and duration matching, across speech and music domains.

Mental representations of speech and musical pitch contours reveal a diversity of profiles in autism spectrum disorder

“…suggested by RMS values) or in internal noise. Hence, these results support the view that pitch processing constitutes domain-general mechanisms in ASD ( Wang, Pfordresher, et al, 2021 ), which provides theoretical implications for using music-based interventions to improve speech for autistic individuals with speech communication deficits ( Eigsti et al, 2011 ).…”

Absolute pitch: A literature review of underlying factors, with special regard to music pedagogy.

“…There is also an increased prevalence among subjects with congenital or early childhood blindness (Bachem, 1940;Gougoux et al, 2004;Hamilton et al, 2004;Ockelford et al, 2006;Welch, 1988), and among subjects with autism spectrum disorders, savant syndrome or Williams syndrome (Brenton et al, 2008;Brown et al, 2003;Dohn et al, 2012;Heaton et al, 1998Heaton et al, , 2001Miller, 1989;Wang et al, 2021;Wenhart & Altenmüller, 2019).…”

Using Pivotal Response Treatment to Improve Language Functions of Autistic Children in Special Schools: A Randomized Controlled Trial

“…Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by social communication impairments along with restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities (American Psychiatric Association, 2013 ). One of the most notable features of autistic children is deficits in language (Kwok et al, 2015 ; Marini et al, 2020 ; Reindal et al, 2021 ), including delayed language development (Marrus et al, 2018 ), impaired verbal imitation (Chen et al, 2022 ; Wang et al, 2021 ), and atypical response to speech (Chen et al, 2019 ; Ramezani et al, 2019 ). Language-related deficits in autistic children have been found to exert enormous impact on cognitive and social development (Franchini et al, 2018 ; Tang et al, 2022 ; Weismer et al, 2018 ), such as the acquisition of social skills (Levinson et al, 2020 ).…”