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Updated: Aug 18, 2026

Testing Sensory and Multisensory Function in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Published on: April 22, 2015
Global and local music perception in children with Williams syndrome
Christine Deruelle1, Daniele Schön, Cécilie Rondan
1Mediterranean Institute of Cognitive Neurosciences, CNRS, UMR 6193, Marseille, France. deruelle@incm.cnrs-mrs.fr
Abstract:
Musical processing can be decomposed into the appreciation of global and local elements. This global/local dissociation was investigated with the processing of contour-violated and interval-violated melodies. Performance of a group of 16 children with Williams syndrome and a group of 16 control children were compared in a same-different task. Control participants were more accurate in detecting differences in the contour-violated than in the interval-violated condition while Williams syndrome individuals performed equally well in both conditions. This finding suggests that global precedence may occur at an early perceptual stage in normally developing children. In contrast, no such global precedence is observed in the Williams syndrome population. These data are discussed in the context of atypical cognitive profiles of individuals with Williams syndrome.
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