Multisensory Speech Perception in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

This study examined unisensory and multisensory speech perception in 8–17 year old children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and typically developing controls matched on chronological age, sex, and IQ. Consonant–vowel syllables were presented in visual only, auditory only, matched audiovisual, and mismatched audiovisual (“McGurk”) conditions. Participants with ASD displayed deficits in visual only and matched audiovisual speech perception. Additionally, children with ASD reported a visual influence on heard speech in response to mismatched audiovisual syllables over a wider window of time relative to controls. Correlational analyses revealed associations between multisensory speech perception, communicative characteristics, and responses to sensory stimuli in ASD. Results suggest atypical speech perception is linked to broader behavioral characteristics of ASD.     

Development of an audiovisual speech perception app for children with autism spectrum disorders

Perception of spoken language requires attention to acoustic as well as visible phonetic information. This article reviews the known differences in audiovisual speech perception in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and specifies the need for interventions that address this construct. Elements of an audiovisual training program are described. This researcher-developed program delivered via an iPad app presents natural speech in the context of increasing noise, but supported with a speaking face. Children are cued to attend to visible articulatory information to assist in perception of the spoken words. Data from four children with ASD ages 8–10 are presented showing that the children improved their performance on an untrained auditory speech-in-noise task.     

‘Autistic’ Local Processing Bias also Found in Children Gifted in Realistic Drawing

We investigated whether typically-developing children with a gift for drawing realistically show the local processing bias seen in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Twenty-seven 6–12 year-olds made an observational drawing (scored for level of realism) and completed three local processing tasks, and parents completed the Childhood Asperger Syndrome Test (CAST). Drawing score predicted local processing performance on all tasks independently of verbal IQ, age, and years of art lessons. Drawing score also predicted more frequent repetitive behaviors as assessed by the CAST. Thus, skill in realistic drawing is associated with a strong local processing bias and a tendency towards repetitive behaviors, showing that traits found in individuals with ASD irrespective of artistic talent are also found in typically developing children with artistic talent.     

A Comparison of the Development of Audiovisual Integration in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders and Typically Developing Children

This study aimed to investigate the development of audiovisual integration in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Audiovisual integration was measured using the McGurk effect in children with ASD aged 7–16 years and typically developing children (control group) matched approximately for age, sex, nonverbal ability and verbal ability. Results showed that the children with ASD were delayed in visual accuracy and audiovisual integration compared to the control group. However, in the audiovisual integration measure, children with ASD appeared to ‘catch-up’ with their typically developing peers at the older age ranges. The suggestion that children with ASD show a deficit in audiovisual integration which diminishes with age has clinical implications for those assessing and treating these children.     

Facial emotion processing and social adaptation in adults with and without autism spectrum disorder

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and individuals with intellectual disabilities without ASD have limited facial emotion recognition abilities, which may adversely impact social adjustment and other adaptive behavior. This study was designed to examine this relationship in adults with and without ASD. Two groups of adults with intellectual disability, one with a comorbid ASD (n = 19) and one without ASD (n = 28) completed two facial emotion tasks and two facial non-emotion tasks, each with two experimental paradigms (labeling and matching-to-sample). Social adaptation was measured with the Socialization, Living Skills, and Communication domains of the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, interview edition (VABS; Sparrow, Balla, & Cicchetti, 1983). An ANCOVA with a repeated measures factor for the two tasks with IQ as the covariate found that ASD group scored significantly lower on both emotion and non-emotion facial processing tasks. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that the association between facial emotion processing accuracy and the level of social adaptation was statistically significance for the ASD group only, and that only facial emotion processing accuracy was associated with social adaptation. Limitations of the study are discussed, explanations for the differential findings for the ASD and non-ASD groups are proposed, and implications for intervention are addressed.     

Atypical perceptual and neural processing of emotional prosodic changes in children with autism spectrum disorders

Objective

The present study explored the processing of emotional speech prosody in school-aged children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) but without marked language impairments (children with ASD [no LI]).

Atypical attention to voice in toddlers and pre-schoolers with autism spectrum disorder is related to unimpaired cognitive abilities. An ERP study

BackgroundSound perception in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is usually at typical levels, even when auditory stimuli carry a social value, as it is the case for speech. Nevertheless, orienting to sounds in a speech context might be atypical in some individuals with ASD, which in ERP studies is reflected by a diminished P3a component. As P3 values and cognitive abilities seem to be inversely related under some circumstances, the current study investigates whether diminished attentional orienting to sounds in speech is equally observable in children with ASD with and without developmental delay (DD).MethodChildren with typical development (TD, n = 17) or ASD, with or without comorbid DD (ASD/DD, n = 22, and ASD/noDD, n = 12), aged 1.5 through 4 years took part in a passive auditory oddball task while EEG data were recorded. The paradigm consisted in the presentation of two deviant stimuli (one vowel sound and one complex tone) either in a speech or in a non-speech context.ResultsWe found overall more negative MMN voltages in both ASD groups compared to TD. For P3a mean voltages, we found an attenuated response in children ASD/noDD when deviant tones were presented in speech, but not in other conditions. Children with ASD/DD did not differ from TD in P3a mean voltages.ConclusionAtypical speech sound processing might be more accentuated in children with ASD/noDD than in their peers with comorbid DD. This finding is interpreted within the theoretical framework of neural adaptation.     

Private Speech and Executive Functioning among High-Functioning Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders

Private speech used by high-functioning children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) (n = 33) during two executive functioning tasks was compared to that of typically developing children (n = 28), and children with ADHD (n = 21). Children with ASD were as likely as others to talk to themselves and their speech was similarly relevant and likely to appear in moments of task difficulty. Unlike others, children with ASD were more likely to get items correct when they were talking than when they were silent. Group differences in performance were observed when children were silent but not when children were talking. Findings suggest that autistic children talk to themselves in relevant ways during problem-solving and that such speech is helpful in normalizing their executive performance relative to controls.     

Atypical preference for infant-directed speech as an early marker of autism spectrum disorders? A literature review and directions for further research

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) refer to a complex group of neurodevelopmental disorders causing difficulties with communication and interpersonal relationships, as well as restricted and repetitive behaviours and interests. As early identification, diagnosis, and intervention provide better long-term outcomes, early markers of ASD have gained increased research attention. This review examines evidence that auditory processing enhanced by social interest, in particular auditory preference of speech directed towards infants and young children (i.e. infant-directed speech – IDS), may be an early marker of risk for ASD. Although this review provides evidence for IDS preference as, indeed, a potential early marker of ASD, the explanation for differences in IDS processing among children with ASD versus other children remains unclear, as are the implications of these impairments for later social-communicative development. Therefore, it is crucial to explore atypicalities in IDS processing early on development and to understand whether preferential listening to specific types of speech sounds in the first years of life may help to predict the impairments in social and language development.     

Dichotic listening and sentence repetition performance in children with reading difficulties

Numerous investigations have identified weaknesses in speech processing and language skills in children with dyslexia; however, little is known about these abilities in children with reading difficulties (RD). The primary objective of this investigation was to determine the utility of auditory speech processing tasks in differentiating children with RD from those with typical reading skills. It was hypothesized that children, who perform below grade level in reading, would also show poorer performance on both dichotic listening and sentence repetition tasks because of the reciprocal influences of deficient auditory speech processing and language abilities. A total of 180 Hungarian-speaking, monolingual 8-, 9- and 10-year-old children, with and without RD, participated in dichotic listening and sentence repetition (modified by noise and morphosyntactic complexity) tasks. Performances were compared across ability groups, age and gender. Children with RD evidenced significantly poorer performance than controls on both tasks. Effects for age and gender were more noticeable in students with RD. Our findings support the notion that reading deficiencies are also associated with poor auditory speech processing and language abilities in cases where dyslexia is not diagnosed. We suggest that these tasks may be used as easy and fast screening tests in the identification of RD.     

Visual search strategies of children with and without autism spectrum disorders during an embedded figures task

Individuals with ASD often demonstrate superior performance on embedded figures tasks (EFTs). We investigated visual scanning behaviour in children with ASD during an EFT in an attempt replicating a previous study examining differences in visual search behaviour. Twenty-three children with, and 31 children without an ASD were shown 16 items from the Figure-Ground subtest of the TVPS-3 while wearing an eye tracker. Children with ASD exhibited fewer fixations, and less time per fixation, on the target figure. Accuracy was similar between the two groups. There were no other noteworthy differences between children with and without ASD. Differences in visual scanning patterns in the presence of typical behavioural performance suggest that any purported differences in processing style may not be detrimental to cognitive performance and further refinement of the current methodology may lead to support for a purported advantageous cognitive style.     

Global and configural visual processing in adults with autism and Asperger syndrome

This study was designed to explore how adults with autism and Asperger syndrome (ASD) would visually process compound figures. They were tested in two tasks, one involving hierarchical global/local stimuli, the other involving face-like or geometrical stimuli where the processing of the inter-elemental spatial relationships was emphasized. Adults with ASD showed, like controls, a preference for the global level of the hierarchical stimuli. With the stimuli involving inter-elemental spatial relationship manipulations, the adults with ASD showed a preference for local elements, whereas controls did not show a preference. This supports earlier findings from children with ASD, suggesting that though individuals with autism may process global aspects of stimuli in priority, they tend to specific aspects in stimuli containing both local and configural elements.     

Neural initialization of audiovisual integration in prereaders at varying risk for developmental dyslexia

Learning letter‐speech sound correspondences is a major step in reading acquisition and is severely impaired in children with dyslexia. Up to now, it remains largely unknown how quickly neural networks adopt specific functions during audiovisual integration of linguistic information when prereading children learn letter‐speech sound correspondences. Here, we simulated the process of learning letter‐speech sound correspondences in 20 prereading children (6.13–7.17 years) at varying risk for dyslexia by training artificial letter‐speech sound correspondences within a single experimental session. Subsequently, we acquired simultaneously event‐related potentials (ERP) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans during implicit audiovisual presentation of trained and untrained pairs. Audiovisual integration of trained pairs correlated with individual learning rates in right superior temporal, left inferior temporal, and bilateral parietal areas and with phonological awareness in left temporal areas. In correspondence, a differential left‐lateralized parietooccipitotemporal ERP at 400 ms for trained pairs correlated with learning achievement and familial risk. Finally, a late (650 ms) posterior negativity indicating audiovisual congruency of trained pairs was associated with increased fMRI activation in the left occipital cortex. Taken together, a short (<30 min) letter‐speech sound training initializes audiovisual integration in neural systems that are responsible for processing linguistic information in proficient readers. To conclude, the ability to learn grapheme‐phoneme correspondences, the familial history of reading disability, and phonological awareness of prereading children account for the degree of audiovisual integration in a distributed brain network. Such findings on emerging linguistic audiovisual integration could allow for distinguishing between children with typical and atypical reading development. Hum Brain Mapp 38:1038–1055, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Brief Report: Further Evidence for a Link Between Inner Speech Limitations and Executive Function in High-Functioning Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

This study investigated the involvement of inner speech limitations in the executive dysfunction associated with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Seventeen children with ASD and 18 controls, statistically-matched in age and IQ, performed a computer-based card sorting test (CST) to assess cognitive flexibility under four conditions: baseline, with articulatory suppression, with a concurrent mouthing task, and while verbalizing their strategies aloud. Articulatory suppression adversely affected CST performance for the control group but not the ASD group. The results additionally showed that overtly verbalizing strategies did not benefit the ASD children as it did the typically developing children. The findings thus provide further evidence that ASD children do not use inner speech to the same extent, or with the same effectiveness, as typically developing children when performing executive tasks.     

Improving therapeutic outcomes in autism spectrum disorders: Enhancing social communication and sensory processing through the use of interactive robots

For children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), social robots are increasingly utilized as therapeutic tools in order to enhance social skills and communication. Robots have been shown to generate a number of social and behavioral benefits in children with ASD including heightened engagement, increased attention, and decreased social anxiety. Although social robots appear to be effective social reinforcement tools in assistive therapies, the perceptual mechanism underlying these benefits remains unknown. To date, social robot studies have primarily relied on expertise in fields such as engineering and clinical psychology, with measures of social robot efficacy principally limited to qualitative observational assessments of children's interactions with robots. In this review, we examine a range of socially interactive robots that currently have the most widespread use as well as the utility of these robots and their therapeutic effects. In addition, given that social interactions rely on audiovisual communication, we discuss how enhanced sensory processing and integration of robotic social cues may underlie the perceptual and behavioral benefits that social robots confer. Although overall multisensory processing (including audiovisual integration) is impaired in individuals with ASD, social robot interactions may provide therapeutic benefits by allowing audiovisual social cues to be experienced through a simplified version of a human interaction. By applying systems neuroscience tools to identify, analyze, and extend the multisensory perceptual substrates that may underlie the therapeutic benefits of social robots, future studies have the potential to strengthen the clinical utility of social robots for individuals with ASD.     

Effects of Background Noise on Cortical Encoding of Speech in Autism Spectrum Disorders

This study provides new evidence of deficient auditory cortical processing of speech in noise in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Speech-evoked responses (~100–300 ms) in quiet and background noise were evaluated in typically-developing (TD) children and children with ASD. ASD responses showed delayed timing (both conditions) and reduced amplitudes (quiet) compared to TD responses. As expected, TD responses in noise were delayed and reduced compared to quiet responses. However, minimal quiet-to-noise response differences were found in children with ASD, presumably because quiet responses were already severely degraded. Moreover, ASD quiet responses resembled TD noise responses, implying that children with ASD process speech in quiet only as well as TD children do in background noise.     

Reading-Related Brain Changes in Audiovisual Processing: Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal MEG Evidence

The ability to establish associations between visual objects and speech sounds is essential for human reading. Understanding the neural adjustments required for acquisition of these arbitrary audiovisual associations can shed light on fundamental reading mechanisms and help reveal how literacy builds on pre-existing brain circuits. To address these questions, the present longitudinal and cross-sectional MEG studies characterize the temporal and spatial neural correlates of audiovisual syllable congruency in children (age range, 4–9 years; 22 males and 20 females) learning to read. Both studies showed that during the first years of reading instruction children gradually set up audiovisual correspondences between letters and speech sounds, which can be detected within the first 400 ms of a bimodal presentation and recruit the superior portions of the left temporal cortex. These findings suggest that children progressively change the way they treat audiovisual syllables as a function of their reading experience. This reading-specific brain plasticity implies (partial) recruitment of pre-existing brain circuits for audiovisual analysis.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Linking visual and auditory linguistic representations is the basis for the development of efficient reading, while dysfunctional audiovisual letter processing predicts future reading disorders. Our developmental MEG project included a longitudinal and a cross-sectional study; both studies showed that children''s audiovisual brain circuits progressively change as a function of reading experience. They also revealed an exceptional degree of neuroplasticity in audiovisual neural networks, showing that as children develop literacy, the brain progressively adapts so as to better detect new correspondences between letters and speech sounds.     

No evidence for impaired multisensory integration of low-level audiovisual stimuli in adolescents and young adults with autism spectrum disorders

Abrupt click sounds can improve the visual processing of flashes in several ways. Here, we examined this in high functioning adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) using three tasks: (1) a task where clicks improve sensitivity for visual temporal order (temporal ventriloquism); (2) a task where a click improves visual search (pip-and-pop), and (3) a task where a click speeds up the visual orienting to a peripheral target (clock reading). Adolescents with ASD were, compared to adolescents with typical development (TD), impaired in judgments of visual temporal order, but they were unimpaired in visual search and orienting. Importantly, in all tasks visual performance of the ASD group improved by the presence of clicks by at least equal amounts as in the TD group. This suggests that adolescents and young adults with ASD show no generalized deficit in the multisensory integration of low-level audiovisual stimuli and/or the phasic alerting by abrupt sounds.     

Realistic Drawing Talent in Typical Adults is Associated with the Same Kind of Local Processing Bias Found in Individuals with ASD

A local processing bias has been found in individuals with autism as well as in typical children with a gift for drawing realistically. This study investigated whether a local processing bias in typical adults is more strongly associated with drawing realism or autistic-like traits. Forty-two adults made an observational drawing (scored for realism), completed four measures that assessed a local processing bias, and completed the Autism-spectrum Quotient (AQ) which assesses autistic-like traits. Drawing Realism score and not AQ score was associated with a local processing bias as shown by performance on two of the tasks. Typical adults who score high in the ability to draw realistically show the same kind of local processing bias found in individuals with ASD.     

Visemic processing in audiovisual discrimination of natural speech: a simultaneous fMRI-EEG study

In a noisy environment, visual perception of articulatory movements improves natural speech intelligibility. Parallel to phonemic processing based on auditory signal, visemic processing constitutes a counterpart based on "visemes", the distinctive visual units of speech. Aiming at investigating the neural substrates of visemic processing in a disturbed environment, we carried out a simultaneous fMRI-EEG experiment based on discriminating syllabic minimal pairs involving three phonological contrasts, each bearing on a single phonetic feature characterised by different degrees of visual distinctiveness. The contrasts involved either labialisation of the vowels, or place of articulation or voicing of the consonants. Audiovisual consonant-vowel syllable pairs were presented either with a static facial configuration or with a dynamic display of articulatory movements related to speech production. In the sound-disturbed MRI environment, the significant improvement of syllabic discrimination achieved in the dynamic audiovisual modality, compared to the static audiovisual modality was associated with activation of the occipito-temporal cortex (MT+V5) bilaterally, and of the left premotor cortex. While the former was activated in response to facial movements independently of their relation to speech, the latter was specifically activated by phonological discrimination. During fMRI, significant evoked potential responses to syllabic discrimination were recorded around 150 and 250 ms following the onset of the second stimulus of the pairs, whose amplitude was greater in the dynamic compared to the static audiovisual modality. Our results provide arguments for the involvement of the speech motor cortex in phonological discrimination, and suggest a multimodal representation of speech units.