Superior discrimination of speech pitch and its relationship to verbal ability in autism spectrum disorders

Abstract

Whilst hypersensitivity to pitch information appears to be characteristic of many individuals with autism spectrum disorders little is known about the implications of such a tendency for language acquisition and development. Discrimination of systematically varied pitch differences between pairs of words, nonwords, and nonspeech pitch contour analogues was assessed in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and matched controls. The findings revealed superior performance in ASD, although, like controls, discrimination of pitch in speech stimuli was poorer in this group than for nonspeech stimuli. Whilst it was hypothesized that enhanced processing of speech pitch would correlate negatively with receptive language skills in ASD, the findings did not fully support this, and enhanced discrimination skills were observed in individuals without significant language impairment. The implications of these findings for understanding heterogeneity of language ability in ASD are discussed.

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

“…A closer look at the literature, however, reveals that surprisingly few studies actually estimated pitch discrimination thresholds for pure tones in ASD. The majority of studies investigated more advanced pitch processing aspects like categorization, labelling, memory or disembedding, and they often used much more complex auditory stimuli or speech stimuli (e.g., Foxton et al 2003;Heaton 2003;Heaton et al 2005Heaton et al , 2008bJärvinen-Pasley and Heaton 2007;Järvinen-Pasley et al 2008a, b;Mottron et al 2000). Only three studies used a similar adaptive staircase procedure (as we did) to assess pure tone pitch processing (Bhatara et al 2013;Bonnel et al 2010;Jones et al 2009).…”

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

“…When not able to rely on long-term pitch memory (not pre-exposed, unlabelled tones condition) children with autism and controls were both equally captured by the global qualities of the chords. Heaton, Hudry, Ludlow, and Hill (2008) and Heaton, Williams, Cummins, and Happé (2008) did not observe enhanced pitch memory or pitch interval processing of musical stimuli in their total sample of children with HFA or LFA, but only in a subsample. This subgroup was characterized by outstanding block design performance and lower vocabulary scores.…”

Measuring neural excitation and inhibition in autism: Different approaches, different findings and different interpretations

“…Although, again, this is in-line with the suggestion of increased inhibition given that medication which increases GABA levels, such as vigabatrin, has been shown to lead to colour perception impairments in healthy individuals (Mecarelli, Rinalduzzi, & Accornero, 2001). In the auditory domain, pitch discrimination is enhanced in ASD (Bonnel et al, 2003(Bonnel et al, , 2010Heaton, Hudry, Ludlow, & Hill, 2008;Jones et al, 2009;Meilleur, Berthiaume, Bertone, & Mottron, 2014;O'Riordan & Passetti, 2006;Stanutz, Wapnick, & Burack, 2014). Similar to orientation discrimination, pitch discrimination is mediated by lateral inhibition (Houtgast, 1972), as auditory cortex cells also become more narrowly tuned to particular frequencies through inhibition (Wang, Caspary, & Salvi, 2000;Wang, Ding, & Salvi, 2002), suggesting increased inhibition in ASD However, some studies find that enhanced pitch discrimination occurs only in a subgroup of individuals with ASD (Bonnel et al, 2010;Jones et al, 2009).…”