Pitch direction ability predicts melodic perception in autism

ABSTRACT

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) often present atypical auditory perception. Previous work has reported both enhanced low-level pitch discrimination and superior abilities to detect local pitch structure on higher-level melodic tasks in ASD. However, it is unclear how low and high levels of auditory perception are related in ASD or typical development (TD), or how this relationship might change across development and stimulus presentation rates. To these aims, in the present study, children with ASD and TD were tested on a low-level pitch direction discrimination task and a high-level melodic global-local task. Groups performed similarly on both of these auditory tasks. Moreover, individual differences in low-level pitch direction ability predicted performance on the higher-level global-local task, with a stronger relationship in ASD. Age did not affect the relationship between low-level and high-level pitch performance in either ASD or TD. However, there was a more positive effect of age on the high-level global-local task performance in TD than ASD. Finally, there was no effect of stimulus rate on the relationship between low-level and high-level pitch performance in either group. These findings provide a better understanding of how perception is associated across levels of processing in ASD versus TD. This work helps to better understand individual differences in auditory perception and to refine ASD phenotypes.

KEYWORDS:

• Autism
• auditory
• pitch
• development
• perception

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the families who participated in this study. The authors thank C. D’Aguiar and E. Kossivas for their assistance with data collection. The authors thank the Data Coordinating Centre at the Montreal Neurological Institute (A. C. Evans, S. Das, C. Rogers, P. Kostopoulos, V. Fonov, and I. Leppert) and NeuroDevNet Informatics Core for data management infrastructure. The authors acknowledge the principal investigators and members of the Pathways in ASD Study Team (www.asdpathways.ca) and Simons Simplex Collection (www.sfari.org) projects, under which certain clinical and diagnostic measures were collected.

Disclosure of Interest

EA has received consultation fees from Roche, royalties from APPI and Springer, and in kind support from AMO Pharma. EG, NEVF, MS, RC, AT, KDT, and KLH declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by NeuroDevNet and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research