Graduate School of Humanities and Sciences, Ochanomizu University, Tokyo, Japan.
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Tokyo, Japan.
Sci Rep. 2024 Jan 16;14(1):1414. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-52050-2.
Individuals with the autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience difficulties in perceiving speech in background noises with temporal dips; they also lack social orienting. We tested two hypotheses: (1) the higher the autistic traits, the lower the performance in the speech-in-noise test, and (2) individuals with high autistic traits experience greater difficulty in perceiving speech, especially in the non-vocal noise, because of their attentional bias toward non-vocal sounds. Thirty-eight female Japanese university students participated in an experiment measuring their ability to perceive speech in the presence of noise. Participants were asked to detect Japanese words embedded in vocal and non-vocal background noises with temporal dips. We found a marginally significant effect of autistic traits on speech perception performance, suggesting a trend that favors the first hypothesis. However, caution is needed in this interpretation because the null hypothesis is not rejected. No significant interaction was found between the types of background noise and autistic traits, indicating that the second hypothesis was not supported. This might be because individuals with high autistic traits in the general population have a weaker attentional bias toward non-vocal sounds than those with ASD or to the explicit instruction given to attend to the target speech.
自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）个体在存在时间凹陷的背景噪声中感知言语存在困难；他们也缺乏社交定向。我们检验了两个假设：（1）自闭症特质越高，在言语感知测试中的表现越差；（2）高自闭症特质个体在感知言语，尤其是非言语噪声时，会遇到更大的困难，因为他们对非言语声音存在注意力偏向。38 名日本女大学生参与了一项实验，以测量她们在噪声存在下感知言语的能力。要求参与者在存在时间凹陷的言语和非言语背景噪声中检测日语单词。我们发现自闭症特质对言语感知表现有轻微的显著影响，这表明第一个假设存在趋势。然而，需要谨慎解释，因为没有拒绝零假设。在背景噪声类型和自闭症特质之间没有发现显著的交互作用，这表明第二个假设不成立。这可能是因为一般人群中具有高自闭症特质的个体对非言语声音的注意力偏向比 ASD 个体或对关注目标言语的明确指令要弱。
