Distinct patterns of discrimination and orienting for temporal processing of speech and nonspeech in Chinese children with autism: an event-related potential study.

Although many studies have reported domain-general impaired duration perception for speech and nonspeech sounds in children with autism, it remained unclear whether this phenomenon is universally applicable regardless of language background. In some languages such as Finnish and Japanese, vowel duration serves a phonemic role that can signify semantic distinction, and in others (e.g., Mandarin Chinese), vowel duration does not carry this phonemic function. The present event-related potential study investigated neural sensitivity to duration contrasts in speech and nonspeech contexts in Mandarin-speaking children with autism and a control group of age-matched typically developing (TD) children. A passive oddball paradigm was adopted to elicit the mismatch negativity (MMN) and involuntary orienting response (P3a) for change detection. A pure tone condition and a vowel condition were used. The MMN results showed that the autism group had diminished response amplitude and delayed latency in the pure tone condition compared to the TD group, whereas no group difference was found in the vowel condition. The P3a results showed no significant between-group MMN difference in the pure tone condition. In the vowel condition, the autism group had smaller P3a than the TD group. Together, the distinct patterns of discrimination and orienting responses for duration contrasts in pure tones and vowels are consistent with the 'allophonic perception' theory for autism, which may reflect a compromised perceptual weighting system for speech learning.

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder scan own-race faces differently from other-race faces.

It has been well documented that people recognize and scan other-race faces differently from faces of their own race. The current study examined whether this cross-racial difference in face processing found in the typical population also exists in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Participants included 5- to 10-year-old children with ASD (n=29), typically developing (TD) children matched on chronological age (n=29), and TD children matched on nonverbal IQ (n=29). Children completed a face recognition task in which they were asked to memorize and recognize both own- and other-race faces while their eye movements were tracked. We found no recognition advantage for own-race faces relative to other-race faces in any of the three groups. However, eye-tracking results indicated that, similar to TD children, children with ASD exhibited a cross-racial face-scanning pattern: they looked at the eyes of other-race faces longer than at those of own-race faces, whereas they looked at the mouth of own-race faces longer than at that of other-race faces. The findings suggest that although children with ASD have difficulty with processing some aspects of faces, their ability to process face race information is relatively spared.

Autistic preschoolers display reduced attention orientation for competition but intact facilitation from a parallel competitor: Eye-tracking and behavioral data.

LAY ABSTRACT: Recent research suggests that we might have underestimated the social motivation of autistic individuals. Autistic children might be engaged in a social situation, even if they seem not to be attending to people in a typical way. Our study investigated how young autistic children behave in a "parallel" situation, which we call "parallel competition," where people participate in friendly contests side-by-side but without direct interaction. First, we used eye-tracking technology to observe how much autistic children pay attention to two video scenarios: one depicting parallel competition, and the other where individuals play directly with each other. The results showed that autistic children looked less toward the parallel competition video than their typically developing peers. However, when autistic children took part in parallel competitions themselves, playing physical and cognitive games against a teacher, their performance improved relative to playing individually just as much as their typically developing peers. This suggests that even though autistic children pay attention to social events differently, they can still benefit from the presence of others. These findings suggest complementing traditional cooperative activities by incorporating parallel activities into educational programs for young autistic children. By doing so, we can create more inclusive learning environments for these children.

Children with autism spectrum disorder are more trusting than typically developing children.

The current study examined whether children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) had an indiscriminate trust bias whereby they would believe any information provided by an unfamiliar adult with whom they had no interactive history. Young school-aged children with ASD and their age- and ability-matched typically developing (TD) peers participated in a simple hide-and-seek game. In the game, an experimenter with whom the children had no previous interactive history pointed to or left a marker on a box to indicate the whereabouts of a hidden reward. Results showed that although young school-aged ASD children did not blindly trust any information provided by the unfamiliar adult, they appeared to be more trusting in the adult informant than did their age- and ability-matched TD children.

Abnormality in face scanning by children with autism spectrum disorder is limited to the eye region: evidence from multi-method analyses of eye tracking data.

There has been considerable controversy regarding whether children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing children (TD) show different eye movement patterns when processing faces. We investigated ASD and age- and IQ-matched TD children's scanning of faces using a novel multi-method approach. We found that ASD children spent less time looking at the whole face generally. After controlling for this difference, ASD children's fixations of the other face parts, except for the eye region, and their scanning paths between face parts were comparable either to the age-matched or IQ-matched TD groups. In contrast, in the eye region, ASD children's scanning differed significantly from that of both TD groups: (a) ASD children fixated significantly less on the right eye (from the observer's view); (b) ASD children's fixations were more biased towards the left eye region; and (c) ASD children fixated below the left eye, whereas TD children fixated on the pupil region of the eye. Thus, ASD children do not have a general abnormality in face scanning. Rather, their abnormality is limited to the eye region, likely due to their strong tendency to avoid eye contact.

Speech-specific categorical perception deficit in autism: An Event-Related Potential study of lexical tone processing in Mandarin-speaking children.

Recent studies reveal that tonal language speakers with autism have enhanced neural sensitivity to pitch changes in nonspeech stimuli but not to lexical tone contrasts in their native language. The present ERP study investigated whether the distinct pitch processing pattern for speech and nonspeech stimuli in autism was due to a speech-specific deficit in categorical perception of lexical tones. A passive oddball paradigm was adopted to examine two groups (16 in the autism group and 15 in the control group) of Chinese children's Mismatch Responses (MMRs) to equivalent pitch deviations representing within-category and between-category differences in speech and nonspeech contexts. To further examine group-level differences in the MMRs to categorical perception of speech/nonspeech stimuli or lack thereof, neural oscillatory activities at the single trial level were further calculated with the inter-trial phase coherence (ITPC) measure for the theta and beta frequency bands. The MMR and ITPC data from the children with autism showed evidence for lack of categorical perception in the lexical tone condition. In view of the important role of lexical tones in acquiring a tonal language, the results point to the necessity of early intervention for the individuals with autism who show such a speech-specific categorical perception deficit.

Pitch Processing in Tonal-Language-Speaking Children with Autism: An Event-Related Potential Study.

The present study investigated pitch processing in Mandarin-speaking children with autism using event-related potential measures. Two experiments were designed to test how acoustic, phonetic and semantic properties of the stimuli contributed to the neural responses for pitch change detection and involuntary attentional orienting. In comparison with age-matched (6-12 years) typically developing controls (16 participants in Experiment 1, 18 in Experiment 2), children with autism (18 participants in Experiment 1, 16 in Experiment 2) showed enhanced neural discriminatory sensitivity in the nonspeech conditions but not for speech stimuli. The results indicate domain specificity of enhanced pitch processing in autism, which may interfere with lexical tone acquisition and language development for children who speak a tonal language.

Atypical prefrontal cortical responses to joint/non-joint attention in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD): A functional near-infrared spectroscopy study.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neuro-developmental disorder, characterized by impairments in one's capacity for joint attention. In this study, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was applied to study the differences in activation and functional connectivity in the prefrontal cortex between children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing (TD) children. 21 ASD and 20 TD children were recruited to perform joint and non-joint attention tasks. Compared with TD children, children with ASD showed reduced activation and atypical functional connectivity pattern in the prefrontal cortex during joint attention. The atypical development of left prefrontal cortex might play an important role in social cognition defects of children with ASD.

Reduced interhemispheric functional connectivity of children with autism spectrum disorder: evidence from functional near infrared spectroscopy studies.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neuro-developmental disorder, which has been associated with atypical neural synchronization. In this study, functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was used to study the differences in functional connectivity in bilateral inferior frontal cortices (IFC) and bilateral temporal cortices (TC) between ASD and typically developing (TD) children between 8 and 11 years of age. As the first report of fNIRS study on the resting state functional connectivity (RSFC) in children with ASD, ten children with ASD and ten TD children were recruited in this study for 8 minute resting state measurement. Compared to TD children, children with ASD showed reduced interhemispheric connectivity in TC. Children with ASD also showed significantly lower local connectivity in bilateral temporal cortices. In contrast to TD children, children with ASD did not show typical patterns of symmetry in functional connectivity in temporal cortex. These results support the feasibility of using the fNIRS method to assess atypical functional connectivity of cortical responses of ASD and its potential application in diagnosis.

Visual Scanning Patterns during the Dimensional Change Card Sorting Task in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Impaired cognitive flexibility in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been reported in previous literature. The present study explored ASD children's visual scanning patterns during the Dimensional Change Card Sorting (DCCS) task using eye-tracking technique. ASD and typical developing (TD) children completed the standardized DCCS procedure on the computer while their eye movements were tracked. Behavioral results confirmed previous findings on ASD children's deficits in executive function. ASD children's visual scanning patterns also showed some specific underlying processes in the DCCS task compared to TD children. For example, ASD children looked shorter at the correct card in the postswitch phase and spent longer time at blank areas than TD children did. ASD children did not show a bias to the color dimension as TD children did. The correlations between the behavioral performance and eye moments were also discussed.