Harwood Vanessa, Baron Alisa, Kleinman Daniel, Campanelli Luca, Irwin Julia, Landi Nicole
Department of Communicative Disorders, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI 02881, USA.
Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, CT 06519, USA.
Brain Sci. 2023 Jun 30;13(7):1011. doi: 10.3390/brainsci13071011.
Audiovisual speech perception includes the simultaneous processing of auditory and visual speech. Deficits in audiovisual speech perception are reported in autistic individuals; however, less is known regarding audiovisual speech perception within the broader autism phenotype (BAP), which includes individuals with elevated, yet subclinical, levels of autistic traits. We investigate the neural indices of audiovisual speech perception in adults exhibiting a range of autism-like traits using event-related potentials (ERPs) in a phonemic restoration paradigm. In this paradigm, we consider conditions where speech articulators (mouth and jaw) are present (AV condition) and obscured by a pixelated mask (PX condition). These two face conditions were included in both passive (simply viewing a speaking face) and active (participants were required to press a button for a specific consonant-vowel stimulus) experiments. The results revealed an N100 ERP component which was present for all listening contexts and conditions; however, it was attenuated in the active AV condition where participants were able to view the speaker's face, including the mouth and jaw. The P300 ERP component was present within the active experiment only, and significantly greater within the AV condition compared to the PX condition. This suggests increased neural effort for detecting deviant stimuli when visible articulation was present and visual influence on perception. Finally, the P300 response was negatively correlated with autism-like traits, suggesting that higher autistic traits were associated with generally smaller P300 responses in the active AV and PX conditions. The conclusions support the finding that atypical audiovisual processing may be characteristic of the BAP in adults.
视听言语感知包括对听觉和视觉言语的同时处理。据报道，自闭症个体存在视听言语感知缺陷；然而，对于更广泛的自闭症表型（BAP）中的视听言语感知了解较少，BAP包括具有升高但亚临床水平自闭症特征的个体。我们使用音素恢复范式中的事件相关电位（ERP）来研究具有一系列自闭症样特征的成年人的视听言语感知的神经指标。在这个范式中，我们考虑言语发音器官（嘴巴和下巴）存在（AV条件）并被像素化面罩遮挡（PX条件）的情况。这两种面部条件都包含在被动（仅观看说话的面部）和主动（要求参与者对特定的辅音 - 元音刺激按下按钮）实验中。结果显示，N100 ERP成分在所有听力背景和条件下都存在；然而，在主动AV条件下它会减弱，在该条件下参与者能够看到说话者的面部，包括嘴巴和下巴。P300 ERP成分仅在主动实验中出现，并且在AV条件下比PX条件下显著更大。这表明当存在可见发音时，检测异常刺激的神经努力增加，以及视觉对感知的影响。最后，P300反应与自闭症样特征呈负相关，表明在主动AV和PX条件下，较高的自闭症特征通常与较小的P300反应相关。这些结论支持了非典型视听处理可能是成年人BAP特征的这一发现。
