title: Clarifying the associations between language and social development in autism: a study of non-native phoneme recognition.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, 660 South Euclid Avenue, Campus Box 8134, St. Louis, MO 63110, USA. constantino@wustl.edu
authors.forename: John N
authors.initials: JN
authors.lastname: Constantino
authors.forename: Dan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Teddi L
authors.initials: TL
authors.lastname: Gray
authors.forename: Maggie M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Gross
authors.forename: Anna M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Abbacchi
authors.forename: Sarah C
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: Catherine E
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: Kohn
authors.forename: Patricia K
authors.initials: PK
authors.lastname: Kuhl
mesh_terms: D020817:Asperger Syndrome / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000523:psychology*; D001244:Association; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000523:psychology*; D001364:Awareness; D002648:Child; D002659:Child Development Disorders, Pervasive / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology; D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D008297:Male; D010553:Personality Development; D010700:Phonetics; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D013063:Speech Discrimination Tests; D013067:Speech Perception