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Can Spectro-Temporal Complexity Explain the Autistic Pattern of Performance on Auditory Tasks?

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Abstract

To test the hypothesis that level of neural complexity explain the relative level of performance and brain activity in autistic individuals, available behavioural, ERP and imaging findings related to the perception of increasingly complex auditory material under various processing tasks in autism were reviewed. Tasks involving simple material (pure tones) and/or low-level operations (detection, labelling, chord disembedding, detection of pitch changes) show a superior level of performance and shorter ERP latencies. In contrast, tasks involving spectrally- and temporally-dynamic material and/or complex operations (evaluation, attention) are poorly performed by autistics, or generate inferior ERP activity or brain activation. Neural complexity required to perform auditory tasks may therefore explain pattern of performance and activation of autistic individuals during auditory tasks.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financed by a Studentship award from the Autism Research Training Grant (CIHR/NAAR) to FS, fellowships from the Fonds de la Recherche en Santé du Québec to LM and BJ, and an operating Grant from the Canadian Institute of Health Research to LM (STN-63728).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pervasive Developmental Disorders Specialized Clinic, Rivière-des-Prairies Hospital, & Fernand Seguin Research Center, University of Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada

    Fabienne Samson, Laurent Mottron & Boutheina Jemel

  2. Department of Psychiatry, University of Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada

    Fabienne Samson, Laurent Mottron & Boutheina Jemel

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

    Pascal Belin

  4. Department of Psychology, University of Montreal, Montréal, QC, Canada

    Pascal Belin

  5. Speech and Hearing Sciences, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China

    Valter Ciocca

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  1. Fabienne Samson
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  2. Laurent Mottron
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  3. Boutheina Jemel
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Correspondence to Laurent Mottron.

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Samson, F., Mottron, L., Jemel, B. et al. Can Spectro-Temporal Complexity Explain the Autistic Pattern of Performance on Auditory Tasks?. J Autism Dev Disord 36, 65–76 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-005-0043-4

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