Dunn Michelle A, Bates Juliana C
Department of Neurology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York, USA.
J Autism Dev Disord. 2005 Jun;35(3):361-76. doi: 10.1007/s10803-005-3304-3.
This study examined the development of neural processing of auditorally presented words in high functioning children with autism. The purpose was to test the hypothesis that electrophysiological abnormalities associated with impairments in early cortical processing and in semantic processing persist into early adolescence in autistic individuals. Eighteen children with autism and 18 normally developing children participated in the study. Ten of the children in each group were 8-9 years old, and 8 in each group were 11-12 years old (n = 36). Lists of words were presented auditorally; half were words belonging to a specified semantic category and half were words outside the category. Results revealed that while early cortical processing abnormalities appeared to resolve with development, children with autism in both age groups failed to exhibit differential semantic processing of in-versus out-of-category words. Further, while 8 year-olds with autism generated a large N4 (a late cognitive ERP component, which is sensitive to semantic deviance from a context) to words in both stimulus classes the 11 year-olds showed attenuated N4 relative to normal controls in response to both stimulus types. An attempt is made to integrate findings with current cognitive theories toward a parsimonious explanation of semantic classification deficits in autism.
本研究考察了高功能自闭症儿童对听觉呈现单词的神经加工发展情况。目的是检验这样一个假设：与早期皮层加工和语义加工受损相关的电生理异常在自闭症个体中会持续到青春期早期。18名自闭症儿童和18名发育正常的儿童参与了该研究。每组中有10名儿童年龄在8 - 9岁，每组中有8名儿童年龄在11 - 12岁（n = 36）。单词列表通过听觉呈现；一半是属于特定语义类别的单词，另一半是该类别之外的单词。结果显示，虽然早期皮层加工异常似乎随着发育而得到解决，但两个年龄组的自闭症儿童都未能表现出对类别内和类别外单词的差异语义加工。此外，虽然8岁的自闭症儿童对两种刺激类型的单词都产生了较大的N4（一种晚期认知ERP成分，对与语境的语义偏差敏感），但11岁的自闭症儿童在对两种刺激类型的反应中，相对于正常对照组，N4有所减弱。研究试图将这些发现与当前的认知理论相结合，以对自闭症中的语义分类缺陷做出简洁的解释。
