Musical Processing in High Functioning Children with Autism

Heaton, Pam F.; Pring, Linda; Hermelin, Beate

doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.2001.tb05765.x

Cited by 30 publications

(25 citation statements)

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“…However, Heaton, Pring, and Hermelin (2001) presented children with autism and age-and intelligence-matched controls with similar untransposed contourmaintaining and contour-violating 6-tone melodies, and here no group differences emerged. It seems probable that differences in findings between the two studies might reflect developmental differences (children/adults) in processing capacities and/or differences in stimuli length.…”

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confidence: 94%

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Pitch memory, labelling and disembedding in autism

Heaton

2003

Child Psychology Psychiatry

232

183

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Background: Autistic musical savants invariably possess absolute pitch ability and are able to disembed individual musical tones from chords. Enhanced pitch discrimination and memory has been found in non‐savant individuals with autism who also show superior performance on visual disembedding tasks. These experiments investigate the extent that enhanced disembedding ability will be found within the musical domain in autism. Method: High‐functioning children with autism, together with age‐ and intelligence‐matched controls, participated in three experiments testing pitch memory, labelling and chord disembedding. Results: The findings from experiment 1 showed enhanced pitch memory and labelling in the autism group. In experiment 2, when subjects were pre‐exposed to labelled individual tones, superior chord segmentation was also found. However, in experiment 3, when disembedding performance was less reliant on pitch memory, no group differences emerged and the children with autism, like controls, perceived musical chords holistically. Conclusion: These findings indicate that pitch memory and labelling is superior in autism and can facilitate performance on musical disembedding tasks. However, when task performance does not rely on long‐term pitch memory, autistic children, like controls, succumb to the Gestalt qualities of chords.

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confidence: 94%

“…In one study, Heaton et al (2001) asked children with autism and controls to judge the pitch direction of small (1-4 semitones), medium (5-8 semitones) and large (9-12 semitones) pitch intervals.…”

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confidence: 99%

Pitch memory, labelling and disembedding in autism

Heaton

2003

Child Psychology Psychiatry

232

183

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“…Several studies showed that ASD-subjects are superior to typically developing subjects when it comes to detailed processing of musical structures (5) . Research of Heaton et al (6,7,8) , for example, showed that children with ASD outperform their matched controls on pitch discrimination, pitch categorization and pitch memory tasks. The results of Bonnel et al (9) showed that subjects with ASD were superior to typicallydevelopingindividualsinthepitchdiscriminationandcategorizationtasks.…”

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confidence: 99%

An Embodied Approach to Testing Musical Empathy in Participants With an Autism Spectrum Disorder

Bruyn¹,

Moelants²,

Leman³

2011

Music and Medicine

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Wepresentanempiricalandqualitativestudytestingmusicalempathicabilityinsubjectswith anautismspectrumdisorder(ASD).Fourexperimentsrequiringanincreasinglevelofempathy with music, from synchronization and attuning to emotional empathy, were carried out, using kinematicdevicesformeasuringembodiedlisteningresponsesandaverbalemotionattribution task. Results suggest that people with ASD have a corporeal understanding of the affective featuresofmusic,sincetheyareabletomirrorstructuralandevenaffectivefeaturesofthemusic into corporeal articulations. However, this corporeal understanding does not give them a straightforwardaccesstotheemotionalcontentofthemusic.ThesubjectswithASDseemedto relyondisembodiedcognitiveprocessestoattributeaffectstomusic. autism,music,musicalempathy,embodiment,affectattribution One of the main symptoms of autism spectrum disorders is a disturbance of social skills, more particularly a disturbance of the ability to share the feelings and emotions with other persons. KeywordsWhile this lack of empathy in autism subjects is evident in social contexts, it is less evident whetheritalsooccursinartisticcontexts.Thispaperaimsattestingtowhatextentsubjectswith autismcandevelopanempathicrelationshipwithmusicthroughlistening.Thefocusonmusicis of particular interest because music is known to be very rich in emotional content. Many (typically developing) people use music for consolation and they often engage in a kind of emotionalrelationshipwiththemusic (1,2,3) .Agoodexampleofthisengagementiswhenpeople listentosadmusic.Initspropercontext,listeningtosadmusicmayconsoleasubjectbecauseit allows the subject to find relief in the imitation of the musical emotion, as if the music is just another social agent with whom it is possible to share emotions (4) . The question is to what degreesubjectswithautismmayfindasimilarreliefinmusic,orinmoregeneralterms,towhat degreetheydifferinmusicalempathyfromacontrolgroupoftypicallydevelopingsubjects. AnumberofstudieshavebeenaddressingtheroleofmusicforpeoplewithASD,therebymainlyfocusing on the perception of musical structure. Several studies showed that ASD-subjects are superior to typically developing subjects when it comes to detailed processing of musical structures (5) . Research of Heaton et al. (6,7,8) , for example, showed that children with ASD outperform their matched controls on pitch discrimination, pitch categorization and pitch memory tasks. The results of Bonnel et al. (9) showed that subjects with ASD were superior to typicallydevelopingindividualsinthepitchdiscriminationandcategorizationtasks.Research on ASD and affect perception in music are much more rare. Musical affect has been addressedinastudybyHeatonetal. (10) .Inthisstudy,fourteenchildrenwithASDandAsperger syndrome were tested for their ability to identify the affective connotations of melodies in the major and minormusicalmode.They were required tomatch musical excerpts with schematic representations of happy and sad faces. The results showed that there were no differences betweentheclinicalgroup...

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“…Вместе с тем, эксперименты показывают, что подгруппа людей с РАС (20% в эксперименте Jones и др. [3]) более чувствительна к изменени ям частоты речевых и неречевых звуков [3,4], в частности, музыки [23]. Это, вероят но, влияет на способность различения и ка тегоризацию фонем в контексте речи, по скольку внимание концентрируется на мел ких деталях, и благодаря этому лингвисти Особые дети -особый взгляд на мир чески релевантные черты упускаются [61].…”

Section: восприятие речиunclassified

Language and communication in autism spectrum disorders

Vinogradova

2015

Autism and Developmental Disorders

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The present article is a review of English_language literature on the topic of development of language and communication in people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). It is shown that language in ASD often differs from the one in typical development, particularly in terms of pragmatics, unusual intonation and echolalia, and difficulties in speech perception and comprehension may also be present. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the results of many studies in this area are controversial due to a variety of reasons and it is hardly possible to reach agreement on many questions in this area.

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Musical Processing in High Functioning Children with Autism

Cited by 30 publications

References 4 publications

Pitch memory, labelling and disembedding in autism

Pitch memory, labelling and disembedding in autism

An Embodied Approach to Testing Musical Empathy in Participants With an Autism Spectrum Disorder

Language and communication in autism spectrum disorders

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