Identification of Native Vowels in Normal and Whispered Speech by Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder
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BRIEF REPORT
Identification of Native Vowels in Normal and Whispered Speech by Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder Georgios P. Georgiou1,2,3
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The present study aims to investigate the identification of native vowel categories by adult individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and estimate their reaction times in both normal and whisper registers; their responses were compared with those of typically developing individuals. The results demonstrated that there was no deficit for individuals with ASD in normal speech, but their responses in the whispered speech were impaired. Also, individuals with ASD responded quicker than controls in normal speech but slower in the whispered speech; still, their responses were quicker than the responses of the controls in the whispered mode. The findings can have implications for the understanding of auditory sensitivities and auditory processing time in individuals with ASD as well as for clinical practice. Keywords Autism Spectrum Disorder · Vowel identification · Auditory task
Introduction Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often present with atypical auditory processing sensory profiles; they might show hyper- or hypo-sensitivity to sensory stimuli including sound (Dunlop et al. 2016). Several studies have portrayed that individuals with ASD have enhanced or superior low-level speech processing abilities in simple psychoacoustic tasks. This is evident especially in segment perception, pitch and rhythm perception, and vocal timbre discrimination (Järvinen-Pasley et al. 2008; Bonnel et al. 2010). For example, Lepistö et al. (2008), who employed electrophysiological methods to investigate phoneme discrimination, found that individuals with ASD had enhanced abilities in discriminating phonemes compared to the control group of typically developing subjects, which may suggest better speech comprehension.
* Georgios P. Georgiou [email protected] 1
Department of General and Russian Linguistics, RUDN University, Moscow, Russia
2
Present Address: Head of RUDN University Phonetic Lab, Moscow, Russia
3
Present Address: School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Central Lancashire, Larnaca, Cyprus
It has been argued that reaction time measures are important parts of speech perception tests. The time needed for the selection of a response in a perceptual auditory task reflects the perceptual processing level and the type of information that is demanded for the appropriate response decision (Georgiou 2020). Earlier research demonstrates that individuals with ASD respond quickly in forced-choice auditory perceptual tasks. For example, Oades et al. (1988) found that although children with ASD performed more poorly than the typically developing controls in a tone discrimination task, they reacted quicker. Gomot et al. (2008) observed that although children and adolescents with ASD had similar accuracy to the controls in the discrimination of complex
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