Cerebral laterality for phonemic and prosodic cue decoding in children with autism

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Developmental Psychology
• Speech and Hearing Science

Background:

• Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by social communication deficits.
• Understanding the neural underpinnings of auditory processing in ASD is crucial for targeted interventions.
• Cerebral functional lateralization, particularly for language, is a key area of investigation in neurodevelopmental disorders.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate cerebral functional lateralization for phonological processing in children with ASD compared to typically developing children (TDC).
• To examine auditory evoked responses in temporal areas to phonemic and prosodic contrasts using near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS).
• To assess the neural recruitment differences in decoding phonetic cues between ASD and TDC.

Main Methods:

• Utilized near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) to measure auditory evoked-responses in the temporal lobes.
• Presented phonemic and prosodic contrasts within word contexts to participants.
• Compared brain activity patterns between children with ASD and TDC.

Main Results:

• Typically developing children (TDC) exhibited stronger left-dominant responses to phonemic differences and right-dominant responses to prosodic differences.
• Children with ASD showed similar tendencies but with weaker functional asymmetry for phonemic changes, indicating less specialized left-brain function.
• The typical asymmetry for prosodic processing in TDC was discussed in relation to acoustic-physical perceptual abilities in ASD.

Conclusions:

• ASD is associated with differential neural recruitment in decoding phonetic cues compared to TDC.
• NIRS is a viable neuroimaging method for studying children with developmental disorders, including ASD.
• Findings suggest atypical cerebral lateralization for phonological processing in children with ASD.