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Alexithymia impacts an individual's ability to recognize and understand emotions and frequently co-occurs with autism. This study investigated the relationship between children's alexithymia, autistic traits, and caregiver reactions to their child's negative emotions. Caregivers of 54 autistic and 51 non-autistic children between the ages of 7 and 12 years rated their child's alexithymia and autistic trait severity and their reactions to their child's negative emotions. Caregivers of autistic children reported greater supportive reactions and fewer restrictive/controlling reactions to their child's negative emotions when their child had more alexithymia traits. This study extends previous research by demonstrating that caregivers of autistic children with co-occurring alexithymia traits represent a specific subgroup of caregivers that respond more positively to their child's negative emotions.

Decreased sound tolerance (DST) is the most common sensory difficulty experienced by autistic individuals. Parents of 88 autistic children and young adults between the ages of 3 and 30 described coping strategies and physical and emotional responses used to deal with distressing sounds, and their impact on daily activities. Loud, sudden, and high-pitched sounds were most commonly endorsed as distressing, most often causing autistic children and young adults to cover their ears or yell, while producing stress, irritation, fear, and anxiety. Parents reported warning their child, providing breaks, or avoiding noisy settings as the most used coping strategies. Overall, findings indicate that DST leads to fewer opportunities for autistic children and young adults to participate at home, at school, and in the community. Further, results suggest hyperacusis, misophonia, and phonophobia, subtypes of DST, are present in autistic children and young adults.

Author(s): Cassia L. McIntyre [sup.1], Troy Q. Boucher [sup.1], Nichole E. Scheerer [sup.1] [sup.2], Mandeep Gurm [sup.1], Grace Iarocci [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.61971.38, 0000 0004 1936 7494, Department of [...]

Introduction: Although autism inclusion and acceptance has increased in recent years, autistic people continue to face stigmatization, exclusion, and victimization. Based on brief 10-second videos, non-autistic adults rate autistic adults less favourably than they rate non-autistic adults in terms of traits and behavioural intentions. In the current study, we extended this paradigm to investigate the first impressions of autistic and non-autistic children by non-autistic adult raters and examined the relationship between the rater's own characteristics and bias against autistic children. Method: Segments of video recorded interviews from 15 autistic and 15 non-autistic children were shown to 346 undergraduate students in audio with video, audio only, video only, transcript, or still image conditions. Participants rated each child on a series of traits and behavioural intentions toward the child, and then completed a series of questionnaires measuring their own social competence, autistic traits, quantity and quality of past experiences with autistic people, and explicit autism stigma. Results: Overall, autistic children were rated more negatively than non-autistic children, particularly in conditions containing audio. Raters with higher social competence and explicit autism stigma rated autistic children more negatively, whereas raters with more autistic traits and more positive past experiences with autistic people rated autistic children more positively. Discussion: These rapid negative judgments may contribute to the social exclusion experienced by autistic children. The findings indicate that certain personal characteristics may be related to more stigmatised views of autism and decreased willingness to interact with the autistic person. The implications of the findings are discussed in relation to the social inclusion and well-being of autistic people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined involuntary capture of attention, overt attention, and stimulus valence and arousal ratings, all factors that can contribute to potential attentional biases to face and train objects in children with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In the visual domain, faces are particularly captivating, and are thought to have a 'special status' in the attentional system. Research suggests that similar attentional biases may exist for other objects of expertise (e.g. birds for bird experts), providing support for the role of exposure in attention prioritization. Autistic individuals often have circumscribed interests around certain classes of objects, such as trains, that are related to vehicles and mechanical systems. This research aimed to determine whether this propensity in autistic individuals leads to stronger attention capture by trains, and perhaps weaker attention capture by faces, than what would be expected in non-autistic children. In Experiment 1, autistic children (6–14 years old) and age- and IQ-matched non-autistic children performed a visual search task where they manually indicated whether a target butterfly appeared amongst an array of face, train, and neutral distractors while their eye-movements were tracked. Autistic children were no less susceptible to attention capture by faces than non-autistic children. Overall, for both groups, trains captured attention more strongly than face stimuli and, trains had a larger effect on overt attention to the target stimuli, relative to face distractors. In Experiment 2, a new group of children (autistic and non-autistic) rated train stimuli as more interesting and exciting than the face stimuli, with no differences between groups. These results suggest that: (1) other objects (trains) can capture attention in a similar manner as faces, in both autistic and non-autistic children (2) attention capture is driven partly by voluntary attentional processes related to personal interest or affective responses to the stimuli. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alexithymia is characterized by difficulties identifying and describing one's own emotions and the emotions of others. These challenges with understanding emotions in people with alexithymia may give rise to difficulties with social interactions. Given that alexithymia frequently co‐occurs with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and that both populations have difficulties with social interactions, it is of interest to determine whether alexithymia can help to parse some of the heterogeneity in social competence in autistic and nonautistic individuals. The caregivers of 241 children (6–14 years old), including 120 autistic, and 121 nonautistic, rated their child's social competence using the Multidimensional Social Competence Scale (MSCS), autism traits using the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ), and alexithymia traits using the Children's Alexithymia Measure (CAM). Regression analyses indicated that age, IQ, sex, AQ, and CAM scores accounted for 40.2% of the variance in autistic children's, and 68.2% of the variance in nonautistic children's, parent‐reported social competence. Importantly, after controlling for age, IQ, sex, and AQ scores, CAM scores alone accounted for an additional 16.2% of the variance in autistic children's, and 17.4% of the variance in nonautistic children's social competence. These results indicate that higher alexithymia traits predict lower levels of social competence, suggesting that increased difficulty in identifying and describing one's own emotions and the emotions of others is associated with poorer social competence. Furthermore, CAM scores were found to partially mediate the relationship between autistic traits and social competence, suggesting that comorbid alexithymia traits may be partially responsible for poor social competence in individuals with high autistic traits. This research contributes to the understanding of the factors associated with the development of social competence and highlights alexithymia as a potential target for identification and intervention to improve social competence. Lay Summary: Alexithymia is a condition where people find it hard to think and talk about their (and others') feelings. About 50% of autistic people have alexithymia. This might be why they have social and emotional difficulties. Parents answered questions about alexithymia and social difficulties their children have. Children with more alexithymia problems had poorer social skills. Thus, alexithymia may be related to social problems faced by autistic and nonautistic children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder characterized by persistent deficits in social communication and interaction. Speech is an important form of social communication. Prosody (e.g. vocal pitch, rhythm, etc.), one aspect of the speech signal, is crucial for ensuring information about the emotionality, excitability, and intent of the speaker, is accurately expressed. The objective of this study was to gain a better understanding of how auditory information is used to regulate speech prosody in autistic and non‐autistic children, while exploring the relationship between the prosodic control of speech and social competence. Eighty autistic (M = 8.48 years, SD = 2.55) and non‐autistic (M = 7.36 years, SD = 2.51) participants produced vocalizations while exposed to unaltered and frequency altered auditory feedback. The parent‐report Multidimensional Social Competence Scale was used to assess social competence, while the Autism‐Spectrum Quotient and the Autism Spectrum Rating Scales were used to assess autism characteristics. Results indicate that vocal response magnitudes and vocal variability were similar across autistic and non‐autistic children. However, autistic children produced significantly faster responses to the auditory feedback manipulation. Hierarchical multiple regressions indicated that these faster responses were significantly associated with poorer parent‐rated social competence and higher autism characteristics. These findings suggest that prosodic speech production differences are present in at least a subgroup of autistic children. These results represent a key step in understanding how atypicalities in the mechanisms supporting speech production may manifest in social‐communication deficits, as well as broader social competence, and vice versa. Autism Res 2020, 13: 1880‐1892. © 2020 International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals LLC Lay Summary In this study, autistic and non‐autistic children produced vowel sounds while listening to themselves through headphones. When the children heard their vocal pitch shifted upward or downward, they compensated by shifting their vocal pitch in the opposite direction. Interestingly, autistic children were faster to correct for the perceived vowel sound changes than their typically developing peers. Faster responses in the children with ASD were linked to poorer ratings of their social abilities by their parent. These results suggest that autistic and non‐autistic children show differences in how quickly they control their speech, and these differences may be related to the social challenges experienced by autistic children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children maintain fluent speech despite dramatic changes to their articulators during development. Auditory feedback aids in the acquisition and maintenance of the sensorimotor mechanisms that underlie vocal motor control. MacDonald, Johnson, Forsythe, Plante, and Munhall (2012) reported that toddlers' speech motor control systems may "suppress" the influence of auditory feedback, since exposure to altered auditory feedback regarding their formant frequencies did not lead to modifications of their speech. This finding is not parsimonious with most theories of motor control. Here, we exposed toddlers to perturbations to the pitch of their auditory feedback as they vocalized. Toddlers compensated for the manipulations, producing significantly different responses to upward and downward perturbations. These data represent the first empirical demonstration that toddlers use auditory feedback for vocal motor control. Furthermore, our findings suggest toddlers are more sensitive to changes to the postural properties of their auditory feedback, such as fundamental frequency, relative to the phonemic properties, such as formant frequencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parent mediated interventions have the potential to positively influence the interactions and developmental outcomes of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, a range of factors relating to children, parents and caregivers, and study design may impact on outcomes and thus the generalizability of these interventions to the broader community. The objective of this review was to examine factors that may influence the feasibility, appropriateness, effectiveness, and generalizability of parent mediated interventions for children with ASD. We conducted a systematic review, yielding 41 articles. There was substantial variability in the intervention type, intensity, and study quality. Notably, 46 different inclusion/exclusion criteria were reported across studies including factors relating to children's development, access to other services, comorbidities, parental factors, and access to the intervention. Fifteen articles included examination of 45 different factors potentially associated with, or influencing, intervention outcomes including child (e.g., language skills, ASD severity, cognition) and parent (e.g., adherence and fidelity, education) factors. Although there is clear evidence for an increasingly sophisticated (e.g., systematic phased research for some interventions) and diverse (e.g., studies in geographical diverse contexts including low‐resource communities) approach to research examining parent mediated interventions, there remains a need for improved study quality and measurement consistency in research, including a detailed examination of factors that may predict, moderate, and mediate intervention effectiveness for children and their parents. Autism Res 2019, 12: 1304–1321. © 2019 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Lay Summary: Parent mediated interventions—in which parents adapt their own behavior or deliver interventions to help their children learn—appear to be effective for some children with autism spectrum disorder. In this review, we identified a range of child, parent, and study design factors that may influence intervention outcomes and ultimately the uptake of these approaches in the community. We suggest that research in this area could be further improved by ensuring that studies include diverse groups of children and parents, and by using study designs that help to establish not only if interventions work, but for whom they work best and why. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Finding out which lexico-semantic features of cognates are critical in crosslanguage studies and comparing these features with noncognates helps researchers to decide which features to control in studies with cognates. Normative databases provide necessary information for this purpose. Such resources are lacking in the Persian language. We created a dataset and determined norms for the essential lexico-semantic features of 288 cognates and noncognates and matched them across conditions. Furthermore, we examined the relationship between these features and the response time (RT) and accuracy of responses in a masked-priming lexical decision task. This task was performed in English by Persian-English speakers in conditions where the prime and target words were related or unrelated in terms of meaning and/or form. Overall, familiarity with English words and English frequency were the best predictors of RT in related and unrelated priming conditions. Pronunciation similarity also predicted RT in the related condition for cognates, while the number of phonemes in the prime predicted RT for the unrelated condition. For both related and unrelated conditions, English frequency was the best predictor for noncognates. This bilingual dataset can be used in bilingual word processing and recognition studies of cognates and noncognates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Auditory feedback plays an important role in monitoring and correcting for errors during speech production. Previous research suggests that at vocalization onset, auditory feedback is compared to a sensory prediction generated by the motor system to ensure the desired fundamental frequency (F0) is produced. After vocalization onset, auditory feedback is compared to the most recently perceived F0 in order to stabilize the vocalization. This study aimed to further investigate whether after vocalization onset, auditory feedback is used strictly to stabilize speakers’ F0, or if it is also influenced by the sensory prediction generated by the motor system. Event-related potentials (ERP) were recorded while participants produced vocalizations and heard the F0 of their auditory feedback perturbed suddenly mid-utterance by half a semitone. For half of the vocalizations, at vocalization onset, participants’ F0 was also raised by half a semitone. Thus, half of the perturbations occurred while participants heard their unaltered auditory feedback, and the other half occurred in auditory feedback that had also been perturbed 50 cents at vocalization onset. If after vocalization onset auditory feedback is strictly used to stabilize speakers’ F0, then similarly sized vocal and ERP responses would be expected across all trials, regardless of whether the perturbation occurred while listening to altered or unaltered auditory feedback. Results indicate that the perturbations to the participants’ unaltered auditory feedback resulted in larger vocal and N1 and P2 ERP responses than perturbations to their altered auditory feedback. These results suggest that after vocalization onset auditory feedback is not strictly used to stabilize speakers’ F0, but is also used to ensure the desired F0 is produced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hearing one's own voice is important for regulating ongoing speech and for mapping speech sounds onto articulator movements. However, it is currently unknown whether attention mediates changes in the relationship between motor commands and their acoustic output, which are necessary as growth and aging inevitably cause changes to the vocal tract. In this study, participants produced vocalizations while they heard their vocal pitch persistently shifted downward one semitone in both single- and dual-task conditions. During the single-task condition, participants vocalized while passively viewing a visual stream. During the dual-task condition, participants vocalized while also monitoring a visual stream for target letters, forcing participants to divide their attention. Participants' vocal pitch was measured across each vocalization, to index the extent to which their ongoing vocalization was modified as a result of the deviant auditory feedback. Smaller compensatory responses were recorded during the dual-task condition, suggesting that divided attention interfered with the use of auditory feedback for the regulation of ongoing vocalizations. Participants' vocal pitch was also measured at the beginning of each vocalization, before auditory feedback was available, to assess the extent to which the deviant auditory feedback was used to modify subsequent speech motor commands. Smaller changes in vocal pitch at vocalization onset were recorded during the dual-task condition, suggesting that divided attention diminished sensorimotor learning. Together, the results of this study suggest that attention is required for the speech motor control system to make optimal use of auditory feedback for the regulation and planning of speech motor commands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Auditory feedback is required to maintain fluent speech. At present, it is unclear how attention modulates auditory feedback processing during ongoing speech. In this event-related potential (ERP) study, participants vocalized/a/, while they heard their vocal pitch suddenly shifted downward a ½ semitone in both single and dual-task conditions. During the single-task condition participants passively viewed a visual stream for cues to start and stop vocalizing. In the dual-task condition, participants vocalized while they identified target stimuli in a visual stream of letters. The presentation rate of the visual stimuli was manipulated in the dual-task condition in order to produce a low, intermediate, and high attentional load. Visual target identification accuracy was lowest in the high attentional load condition, indicating that attentional load was successfully manipulated. Results further showed that participants who were exposed to the single-task condition, prior to the dual-task condition, produced larger vocal compensations during the single-task condition. Thus, when participants’ attention was divided, less attention was available for the monitoring of their auditory feedback, resulting in smaller compensatory vocal responses. However, P1-N1-P2 ERP responses were not affected by divided attention, suggesting that the effect of attentional load was not on the auditory processing of pitch altered feedback, but instead it interfered with the integration of auditory and motor information, or motor control itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Auditory feedback plays an important role in monitoring vocal output and determining when adjustments are necessary. In this study a group of untrained singers participated in a frequency altered feedback experiment to examine if accuracy at matching a note could predict the degree of compensation to auditory feedback that was shifted in frequency. Participants were presented with a target note and instructed to match the note in pitch and duration. Following the onset of the participants’ vocalizations their vocal pitch was shifted down one semi-tone at a random time during their utterance. This altered auditory feedback was instantaneously presented back to them through headphones. Results indicated that note matching accuracy did not correlate with compensation magnitude, however, a significant correlation was found between baseline variability and compensation magnitude. These results suggest that individuals with a more stable baseline fundamental frequency rely more on feedforward control mechanisms than individuals with more variable vocal production. This increased weighting of feedforward control means they are less sensitive to mismatches between their intended vocal production and auditory feedback. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]