RESUMO
Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are characterized by correlated deficiencies in social and language development. This study explored a fundamental aspect of auditory information processing (AIP) that is dependent on social experience and critical to early language development: the ability to compartmentalize close-sounding speech sounds into singular phonemes. We examined this ability by assessing whether close-sounding non-native language phonemes were more likely to be perceived as disparate sounds by school-aged children with high-functioning ASD (n = 27), than by unaffected control subjects (n = 35). No significant group differences were observed. Although earlier in autistic development there may exist qualitative deficits in this specific aspect of AIP, they are not an enduring characteristic of verbal school-aged children with ASD.
Assuntos
Síndrome de Asperger/epidemiologia , Síndrome de Asperger/psicologia , Associação , Transtorno Autístico/epidemiologia , Transtorno Autístico/psicologia , Transtornos da Linguagem/epidemiologia , Desenvolvimento da Personalidade , Fonética , Reconhecimento Psicológico , Percepção da Fala , Conscientização , Criança , Transtornos Globais do Desenvolvimento Infantil/epidemiologia , Transtornos Globais do Desenvolvimento Infantil/psicologia , Cultura , Feminino , Humanos , Transtornos da Linguagem/diagnóstico , Masculino , Testes de Discriminação da FalaRESUMO
Studies of the broader autism phenotype, and of subtle changes in autism symptoms over time, have been compromised by a lack of established quantitative assessment tools. The Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS-formerly known as the Social Reciprocity Scale) is a new instrument that can be completed by parents and/or teachers in 15-20 minutes. We compared the SRS with the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R) in 61 child psychiatric patients. Correlations between SRS scores and ADI-R algorithm scores for DSM-IV criterion sets were on the order of 0.7. SRS scores were unrelated to I.Q. and exhibited inter-rater reliability on the order of 0.8. The SRS is a valid quantitative measure of autistic traits, feasible for use in clinical settings and for large-scale research studies of autism spectrum conditions.