There is increasing evidence that there are deficits in vocal affect recognition abilities in some individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum... Show moreThere is increasing evidence that there are deficits in vocal affect recognition abilities in some individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) and that sensory deficits are also common in these individuals. Little research, however, has focused on the relation between atypical auditory processing and vocal affect recognition abilities. The aim of this study was to examine if there was an association between cortical auditory processing and vocal affect recognition ability, and, in turn, to determine if vocal affect recognition ability was related to parent report of social and leadership skills. First, peripheral auditory processing was examined in a sample of 28 5-18 yearold (mean = 11.48) children and adolescents with an ASD. Vocal affect recognition was assessed by the paralanguage subtests of the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy (DANVA), and magnetoencephalography (MEG) was used to evaluate cortical electrophysiological processing in relation to auditory stimuli. Parent-report was used to assess social skills and leadership with these subtests on the Behavior Assessment Scale for Children-2. Correlational analyses indicated that there were no significant relations between peripheral auditory processing and DANVA scores. Results of hierarchical regression analyses indicated that, after controlling for age, language ability, and IQ, the measures of cortical auditory processing contributed a significant additional 19% of the variance in DANVA-2 scores. Specifically, left hemisphere response latency and right hemisphere rapid auditory processing were related to vocal affect recognition. They also indicated that DANVA-2 scores contributed a significant additional 30% of the variance in parent-rated social skills after controlling for language ability and IQ. However, DANVA-2 scores did not contribute significantly to leadership skills. xi This was the first study to use magnetoencephalography (MEG) to assess auditory evoked fields in relation to vocal affect recognition and to show that there is an association between specific features of cortical auditory processing and vocal affect recognition. These results suggest that the ability to respond to and efficiently process rapidly presented auditory information may be important in extracting affective cues from speech, and for individuals on the autism spectrum, impairment in these abilities may contribute to difficulty in vocal affect recognition. PH.D in Psychology, July 2013 Show less
