Sounds Pleasantness Ratings in Autism: Interaction Between Social Information and Acoustical Noise Level.
Autistic adults find voices and background noise less pleasant, so cutting room hum can boost social participation.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Michel et al. (2024) asked adults with and without autism to rate how pleasant sounds feel.
They played vocal sounds like speech and non-vocal sounds like running water.
Each sound came in quiet and noisy versions to see if background hiss changed the ratings.
What they found
Adults with autism said vocal sounds were less pleasant than non-vocal sounds.
Neurotypical adults showed the opposite pattern.
The groups also flipped on noise: the level most disliked by one group was liked by the other.
How this fits with other research
Dwyer et al. (2023) saw that autistic toddlers’ brains take longer to tune out repeated beeps.
Lisa’s adults give lower pleasantness scores to the same kind of sounds, showing the issue lasts into adulthood.
Ellingsen et al. (2014) found autistic adults like sweet tastes just as much as neurotypicals.
That contrast proves the pleasure gap is sound-specific, not a general liking problem.
Why it matters
If your client avoids group work, check the room noise first. Lower the hum, add soft panels, or let the learner choose a quieter corner. A quick sound survey at intake can flag who needs this tweak.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Play your session’s voice recordings through a phone speaker at two volume levels and ask the learner which feels better—then use the winner.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
A lack of response to voices, and a great interest for music are part of the behavioral expressions, commonly (self-)reported in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). These atypical interests for vocal and musical sounds could be attributable to different levels of acoustical noise, quantified in the harmonic-to-noise ratio (HNR). No previous study has investigated explicit auditory pleasantness in ASD comparing vocal and non-vocal sounds, in relation to acoustic noise level. The aim of this study is to objectively evaluate auditory pleasantness. 16 adults on the autism spectrum and 16 neuro-typical (NT) matched adults rated the likeability of vocal and non-vocal sounds, with varying harmonic-to-noise ratio levels. A group by category interaction in pleasantness judgements revealed that participants on the autism spectrum judged vocal sounds as less pleasant than non-vocal sounds; an effect not found for NT participants. A category by HNR level interaction revealed that participants of both groups rated sounds with a high HNR as more pleasant for non-vocal sounds. A significant group by HNR interaction revealed that people on the autism spectrum tended to judge as less pleasant sounds with high HNR and more pleasant those with low HNR than NT participants. Acoustical noise level of sounds alone does not appear to explain atypical interest for voices and greater interest in music in ASD.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2024 · doi:10.21105/joss.01686