title: Pitch Processing in Tonal-Language-Speaking Children with Autism: An Event-Related Potential Study.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology and Center for the Study of Applied Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, 510631, China.|Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA.
authors.forename: Luodi
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: Guangzhou Rehabilitation and Research Center for Children with Autism, Guangzhou Cana School, Guangzhou, 510540, China.
authors.forename: Yuebo
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Fan
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology and Center for the Study of Applied Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, 510631, China.
authors.forename: Zhizhou
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Deng
authors.affiliation: Guangzhou Rehabilitation and Research Center for Children with Autism, Guangzhou Cana School, Guangzhou, 510540, China.
authors.forename: Dan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology and Center for the Study of Applied Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, 510631, China. suiping@scnu.edu.cn.|Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, 510631, China. suiping@scnu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Suiping
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA. zhanglab@umn.edu.|Center for Neurobehavioral Development, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA. zhanglab@umn.edu.
authors.forename: Yang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D010897:Pitch Discrimination / Q000502:physiology*; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Autism; Event-related potentials (ERPs); Language development; Mismatch negativity (MMN); Pitch processing; Speech perception