Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN 37232, USA.
Frist Center for Autism and Innovation, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37212, USA.
Multisens Res. 2022 Dec 30;36(1):57-74. doi: 10.1163/22134808-bja10087.
Autistic children show reduced multisensory integration of audiovisual speech stimuli in response to the McGurk illusion. Previously, it has been shown that adults can integrate sung McGurk tokens. These sung speech tokens offer more salient visual and auditory cues, in comparison to the spoken tokens, which may increase the identification and integration of visual speech cues in autistic children. Forty participants (20 autism, 20 non-autistic peers) aged 7-14 completed the study. Participants were presented with speech tokens in four modalities: auditory-only, visual-only, congruent audiovisual, and incongruent audiovisual (i.e., McGurk; auditory 'ba' and visual 'ga'). Tokens were also presented in two formats: spoken and sung. Participants indicated what they perceived via a four-button response box (i.e., 'ba', 'ga', 'da', or 'tha'). Accuracies and perception of the McGurk illusion were calculated for each modality and format. Analysis of visual-only identification indicated a significant main effect of format, whereby participants were more accurate in sung versus spoken trials, but no significant main effect of group or interaction effect. Analysis of the McGurk trials indicated no significant main effect of format or group and no significant interaction effect. Sung speech tokens improved identification of visual speech cues, but did not boost the integration of visual cues with heard speech across groups. Additional work is needed to determine what properties of spoken speech contributed to the observed improvement in visual accuracy and to evaluate whether more prolonged exposure to sung speech may yield effects on multisensory integration.
自闭症儿童在对 McGurk 错觉的反应中表现出听觉-视觉言语刺激的多感觉整合减少。先前已经表明，成年人可以整合唱的 McGurk 令牌。与口语令牌相比，这些唱的语音令牌提供了更明显的视觉和听觉线索，这可能会增加自闭症儿童对视觉语音线索的识别和整合。40 名参与者（20 名自闭症，20 名非自闭症同龄人）年龄在 7-14 岁之间完成了这项研究。参与者接受了四种模式的语音令牌呈现：仅听觉、仅视觉、一致的视听和不一致的视听（即 McGurk；听觉“ba”和视觉“ga”）。令牌还以两种格式呈现：口语和唱歌。参与者通过四个按钮响应盒表示他们的感知（即“ba”、“ga”、“da”或“tha”）。为每个模式和格式计算了准确性和 McGurk 错觉的感知。对仅视觉识别的分析表明，格式存在显著的主效应，即参与者在唱歌与口语试验中更准确，但组间没有显著的主效应或交互效应。对 McGurk 试验的分析表明，格式或组没有显著的主效应，也没有显著的交互效应。唱歌的语音令牌提高了对视觉语音线索的识别，但并没有提高群体之间视觉线索与听觉言语的整合。需要进一步的工作来确定口语语音的哪些特性有助于观察到的视觉准确性的提高，并评估对唱歌语音的更长时间暴露是否可能对多感觉整合产生影响。
