Chen Fei, Peng Gang
School of Foreign Languages, Hunan University, Changsha, China.
Research Centre for Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience, Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2021 Nov 8;64(11):4468-4484. doi: 10.1044/2021_JSLHR-20-00725. Epub 2021 Sep 27.
Purpose Previous studies have shown enhanced pitch and impaired time perception in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). However, it remains unclear whether such deviated patterns of auditory processing depending on acoustic dimensions would transfer to the higher level linguistic pitch and time processing. In this study, we compared the categorical perception (CP) of lexical tones and voice onset time (VOT) in Mandarin Chinese, which utilize pitch and time changes, respectively, to convey phonemic contrasts. Method The data were collected from 22 Mandarin-speaking adolescents with ASD and 20 age-matched neurotypical controls. In addition to the identification and discrimination tasks to test CP performance, all the participants were evaluated with their language ability and phonological working memory. Linear mixed-effects models were constructed to evaluate the identification and discrimination scores across different groups and conditions. Results The basic CP pattern of cross-boundary benefit when perceiving both native lexical tones and VOT was largely preserved in high-functioning adolescents with ASD. The degree of CP of lexical tones in ASD was similar to that in typical controls, whereas the degree of CP of VOT in ASD was greatly reduced. Furthermore, the degree of CP of lexical tones correlated with language ability and digit span in ASD participants. Conclusions These findings suggest that the unbalanced acoustic processing capacities for pitch and time can be generalized to the higher level linguistic processing in ASD. Furthermore, the higher degree of CP of lexical tones correlated with better language ability in Mandarin-speaking individuals with ASD.
目的 先前的研究表明，自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）患者存在音高增强和时间感知受损的情况。然而，尚不清楚这种依赖于声学维度的听觉处理偏差模式是否会转移到更高层次的语言音高和时间处理中。在本研究中，我们比较了汉语普通话中声调的范畴感知（CP）和语音起始时间（VOT），它们分别利用音高和时间变化来传达音位对比。方法 数据收集自22名说普通话的ASD青少年和20名年龄匹配的神经典型对照。除了用于测试CP表现的识别和辨别任务外，所有参与者还接受了语言能力和语音工作记忆的评估。构建线性混合效应模型以评估不同组和条件下的识别和辨别分数。结果 在高功能ASD青少年中，感知母语声调及VOT时基本的跨边界获益CP模式在很大程度上得以保留。ASD患者中声调的CP程度与典型对照组相似，而VOT的CP程度在ASD患者中大幅降低。此外，ASD参与者中声调的CP程度与语言能力和数字广度相关。结论 这些发现表明，音高和时间的声学处理能力不平衡可推广到ASD患者更高层次的语言处理中。此外，在说普通话的ASD个体中，声调的CP程度越高与语言能力越好相关。
