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Brief Report: Speech-in-Noise Recognition and the Relation to Vocal Pitch Perception in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Typical Development

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Abstract

We tested the ability to recognise speech-in-noise and its relation to the ability to discriminate vocal pitch in adults with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developed adults (matched pairwise on age, sex, and IQ). Typically developed individuals understood speech in higher noise levels as compared to the ASD group. Within the control group but not within the ASD group, better speech-in-noise recognition abilities were significantly correlated with better vocal pitch discrimination abilities. Our results show that speech-in-noise recognition is restricted in people with ASD. We speculate that perceptual impairments such as difficulties in vocal pitch perception might be relevant in explaining these difficulties in ASD.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to our participants for taking part in the study. We thank Jens Kreitewolf for providing the speech-in-noise recognition test and Sam Matthias for providing the vocal pitch discrimination test.

Funding

This work was funded by a Max Planck Research Group Grant and funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (SENSOCOM, Grant Agreement No. 647051) to KvK.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Technische Universität Dresden, Faculty of Psychology, Chair of Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience, Bamberger Str. 7, 01187, Dresden, Germany

    Stefanie Schelinski & Katharina von Kriegstein

  2. Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Neural Mechanisms of Human Communication Group, Stephanstrasse 1a, 04103, Leipzig, Germany

    Stefanie Schelinski & Katharina von Kriegstein

Authors
  1. Stefanie Schelinski
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  2. Katharina von Kriegstein
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Contributions

SS and KvK designed the experiment. SS coordinated and performed the experiment and analysed the data. SS and KvK wrote the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Stefanie Schelinski.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Written informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study in accordance with procedures approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the University of Leipzig.

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Schelinski, S., von Kriegstein, K. Brief Report: Speech-in-Noise Recognition and the Relation to Vocal Pitch Perception in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Typical Development. J Autism Dev Disord 50, 356–363 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-019-04244-1

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