Abstract
Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are characterized by correlated deficiencies in social and language development. This study explored a fundamental aspect of auditory information processing (AIP) that is dependent on social experience and critical to early language development: the ability to compartmentalize close-sounding speech sounds into singular phonemes. We examined this ability by assessing whether close-sounding non-native language phonemes were more likely to be perceived as disparate sounds by school-aged children with high-functioning ASD (n = 27), than by unaffected control subjects (n = 35). No significant group differences were observed. Although earlier in autistic development there may exist qualitative deficits in this specific aspect of AIP, they are not an enduring characteristic of verbal school-aged children with ASD.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alcantara, J. I., Weisblatt, E. J., Moore, B. C., & Bolton, P. F. (2004). Speech-in-noise perception in high-functioning individuals with autism or Asperger’s syndrome. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 45(6), 1107–1114.
Bishop, D. V., Maybery, M., Wong, D., Maley, A., Hill, W., & Hallmayer, J. (2004). Are phonological processing deficits part of the broad autism phenotype? American Journal of Medical Genetics, 128B(1), 54–60.
Boddaert, N., Chabane, N., Belin, P., Bourgeois, M., Royer, V., Barthelemy, C., Mouren-Simeoni, M. C., Philippe, A., Brunelle, F., Samson, Y., & Zilbovicius, M. (2004). Perception of complex sounds in autism: abnormal auditory cortical processing children. American Journal of Psychiatry, 161(11), 2117–2120.
Cardy, J. E., Flagg, E. J., Roberts, W., & Roberts, T. P. (2005) Delayed mismatch field for speech and non-speech sounds in children with autism. Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology, 16(5), 521–525.
Ceponiene, R., Lepisto, T., Shestakova, A., Vanhala, R., Alku, P., Naatanen, R., & Yaguchi, K. (2003). Speech-sound-selective auditory impairment in children with autism: they can perceive but do not attend. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 100, 5567–5572.
Constantino, J. N., Gruber, C. P., Davis, S., Hayes, S., Passanante, N., & Przybeck, T. (2004). The factor structure of autistic traits. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 45(4), 719–726.
Constantino, J. N., Davis, S. A., Todd, R. D., Schindler, M. K., Gross, M. M., Brophy, S. L., Metzger, L. M., Shoushtari, C. S., Splinter, R., & Reich, W. (2003). Validation of a brief quantitative measure of autistic traits: comparison of the social responsiveness scale with the autism diagnostic interview-revised. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 33(4), 427–433.
Constantino, J. N., & Todd, R. D. (2003). Autistic traits in the general population: A twin study. Archives in General Psychiatry, 60(5), 524–530.
Constantino, J. N. (2005). The social responsiveness scale. Los Angeles: Western Psychological Services.
Gervais, H., Belin, P., Boddaert, N., Leboyer, M., Coez, A., Sfaello, I., Barthelemy, C., Brunelle, F., Samson, Y., & Zilbovicius, M. (2004). Abnormal cortical voice processing autism. Nature Neuroscience, 4(8), 801–802.
Iverson, P., & Kuhl, P. K. (1996). Influences of phonetic identification and category goodness on American listeners’ perception of /r/ and /l/. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 99(2), 1130–1140.
Just, M. A., Cherkassky, V. L., Keller, T. A., & Minshew, N. J. (2004). Cortical activation and synchronization during sentence comprehension in high-functioning autism: Evidence of underconnectivity. Brain, 127, 1811–1821.
Kasai, K., Hashimoto, O., Kawakubo, Y., Yumoto, M., Kamio, S., Itoh, K., Koshida, I., Iwanami, A., Nakagome, K., Fukudoa, M., Yamasue, H., Yamada, H., Abe, O., Aoki, S., & Kato, N. (2005). Delayed automatic detection of change in speech sounds in adults with autism: A magnetoencephalographic study. Clinical Neurophysiology, 116, 1655–1664.
Kemner, C., Verbaten, M. N., Cuperus, J. M., Camfferman, G., & van Engeland, H. (1995). Auditory event-related brain potentials in autistic children and three different control groups. Biological Psychiatry, 38, 150–165.
Kjelgaard, M. M., & Tager-Flusberg, H. (2001). An investigation of language impairment in autism: Implications for genetic subgroups. Language and Cognitive Processes, 16, 287–308.
Kuhl, P. K. (2000). A new view of language acquisition. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 97(22), 11850–11857.
Kuhl, P. K., Tsao, F. M., & Liu, H .M. (2003). Foreign-language experience in infancy: Effects of short-term exposure and social interaction on phonetic learning. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 100(15), 9096–9101.
Kuhl, P. K., Coffey-Corina, S., Padden, D., & Dawson, G. (2005). Links between social and linguistic processing of speech in preschool children with autism: Behavioral and electrophysiological measures. Developmental Science, 8, F1–F12.
Lopez, B., & Leekam, S. R. (2003). Do children with autism fail to process information in context? Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 44(2), 285–300.
Lord, C., & Paul, R. (1997). Language and communication in autism. In D. J. Cohen, & F. R. Volkmar (Eds.), Handbook of autism and pervasive developmental disorders 2nd ed., (pp. 195–225). New York: Wiley.
Senechal, M., Ouellette, G., & Young, L. (2004). Testing the concurrent and predictive relations among articulation accuracy, speech perception, and phoneme awareness. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 89, 242–269.
Spiker, D., Lotspeich, L. J., Dimiceli, S., Myers, R. M., & Risch, N. (2002). Behavioral phenotypic variation in autism multiplex families: Evidence for a continuous severity gradient. American Journal of Medical Genetics, 114(2), 129–136.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported in part, by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD042541) to Dr. Constantino. We wish to thank two anonymous colleagues for their very thoughtful reviews of an earlier version of this manuscript. We gratefully acknowledge the generous donation of time and effort by the subjects and their families, all of whom have participated in our longitudinal research program. For their ongoing dedication to scientific research, we are deeply grateful.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Constantino, J.N., Yang, D., Gray, T.L. et al. Clarifying the Associations Between Language and Social Development in Autism: A Study of Non-native Phoneme Recognition. J Autism Dev Disord 37, 1256–1263 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-006-0269-9
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-006-0269-9