Auditory spatial attention to speech and complex non-speech sounds in children with autism spectrum disorder.
Kids with autism show leaky auditory attention, responding to off-target sounds no matter the sound type.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers played speech and complex tones from different spots in a room.
Kids with autism and typical kids pressed a button when they heard the target sound.
The team tracked how often kids responded to sounds coming from the wrong place.
What they found
Autistic kids responded to off-target sounds more than typical kids.
This happened for both speech and non-speech sounds.
The leakier the attention, the higher the child’s autism severity score.
How this fits with other research
Georgiou (2023) also found weaker early brain responses to speech sounds in autism.
Together, the studies show auditory problems start at both brain and behavior levels.
Koenen et al. (2016) looked at attention and word learning.
They found low-verbal kids with autism needed extra naming cues to learn shapes.
That fits: if attention is diffuse, you may need clearer labels to latch onto words.
Why it matters
Your student might look distracted even when they seem to be listening.
Check if they turn to noises across the room during tasks.
Try seating them away from vents, windows, or humming lights.
Use clear, close-up speech or headphones to give their brain less clutter.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
One of the earliest observable impairments in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a failure to orient to speech and other social stimuli. Auditory spatial attention, a key component of orienting to sounds in the environment, has been shown to be impaired in adults with ASD. Additionally, specific deficits in orienting to social sounds could be related to increased acoustic complexity of speech. We aimed to characterize auditory spatial attention in children with ASD and neurotypical controls, and to determine the effect of auditory stimulus complexity on spatial attention. In a spatial attention task, target and distractor sounds were played randomly in rapid succession from speakers in a free-field array. Participants attended to a central or peripheral location, and were instructed to respond to target sounds at the attended location while ignoring nearby sounds. Stimulus-specific blocks evaluated spatial attention for simple non-speech tones, speech sounds (vowels), and complex non-speech sounds matched to vowels on key acoustic properties. Children with ASD had significantly more diffuse auditory spatial attention than neurotypical children when attending front, indicated by increased responding to sounds at adjacent non-target locations. No significant differences in spatial attention emerged based on stimulus complexity. Additionally, in the ASD group, more diffuse spatial attention was associated with more severe ASD symptoms but not with general inattention symptoms. Spatial attention deficits have important implications for understanding social orienting deficits and atypical attentional processes that contribute to core deficits of ASD. Autism Res 2017, 10: 1405-1416. © 2017 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2017 · doi:10.1002/aur.1790