title: Brief Report: Biological Sound Processing in Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder.
abstract: There is debate whether social impairments in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are truly domain-specific, or if they reflect generalized deficits in lower-level cognitive processes. To solve this issue, we used auditory-evoked EEG responses to assess novelty detection (MMN component) and involuntary attentional orientation (P3 component) induced by socially-relevant, human-produced, biological sounds and acoustically-matched control stimuli in children with ASD and controls. Results show that early sensory and novelty processing of biological stimuli are preserved in ASD, but that automatic attentional orientation for biological sounds is markedly altered. These results support the notion that at least some cognitive processes of ASD are specifically altered when it comes to processing social stimuli.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada.
authors.forename: Melissa
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lortie
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Canada.|Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Trois-Rivières, Canada.
authors.forename: Léa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Proulx-Bégin
authors.affiliation: CHU Sainte-Justine Research Center and Department of Psychology, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal, Canada.
authors.forename: Dave
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Saint-Amour
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada.|CHU Sainte-Justine Research Center, Montréal, Canada.
authors.forename: Dominique
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Cousineau
authors.affiliation: CHU Sainte-Justine Research Center and Department of Psychology, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada.
authors.forename: Hugo
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Théoret
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics, Sherbrooke University, CHU Sherbrooke Research Center, 3001, 12e Avenue Nord, Sherbrooke, QC, J1H 5N4, Canada. jean-francois.lepage@usherbrooke.ca.
authors.forename: Jean-François
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-1181-6043
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Lepage
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D001288:Attention; D001307:Auditory Perception; D000067877:Autism Spectrum Disorder / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002648:Child; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012919:Social Behavior
keywords: Attention; Auditory; Biological actions; EEG; Event related potentials; MMN; Novelty detection; P3; Social impairments