Audiovisual Speech Integration in Children with ASD

描述(由申请人提供)：自闭症谱系障碍(ASD)是指一系列严重的神经精神障碍，其特征是沟通障碍、社会互惠和存在受限、重复的行为。对于典型的听众来说，说话者面部的视觉信息会影响所听到的内容。自闭症患者对面部的社交注视减少，这表明关于视觉语言的许多信息在这一人群中丢失了。因此，患有自闭症的儿童和青少年似乎不太容易受到视觉语音信息的影响。本项目的目标是检测患有自闭症的高功能言语儿童对视觉语言信息的敏感性。该应用程序使用创新的视觉跟踪方法来(1)评估ASD儿童在清晰和嘈杂的听力环境中与典型发育障碍(TD)对照儿童整合视听(AV)言语的程度，(2)检测ASD和TD感受者在AV言语中检测不同步的能力，这与典型感受者的AV整合有关，以及(3)评估ASD和TD感受者对说话者的凝视行为。低功能、非言语的自闭症儿童在产出性语言方面的局限性和社交方面的困难，导致他们在言语知觉研究中的代表性不足。因此，该应用程序的另一个目标是为患有ASD的低功能、非语言儿童和较小的TD儿童开发一种训练程序，使他们能够参与听觉和AV言语的知觉研究。相关性：仔细评估言语对视觉信息的敏感性对于理解高功能自闭症儿童言语的知觉加工具有重要的实践和理论意义，包括(1)识别和表征AV整合缺陷和(2)有针对性的干预设计。此外，为患有自闭症的非语言功能低下儿童和年龄较小的TD儿童制定训练程序，将有助于更好地了解非语言儿童对言语的感知处理，并作为未来干预的典范。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) refer to a continuum of severe neuropsychiatric disorders characterized by deficits in communication, social reciprocity and the presence of restricted, repetitive behaviors. For typical listeners, visual information from a speaker's face influences what is heard. Individuals with ASD show reduced social gaze to faces, which suggests that much information about visual speech is lost in this population. Accordingly, children and adolescents with ASD appear to be less susceptible to visual speech information. The goal of this project is to examine sensitivity to visual speech information in high-functioning, verbal children with ASD. This application uses innovative visual tracking methodology to (1) evaluate the degree to which children with ASD integrate audiovisual (AV) speech in comparison to typically developing (TD) controls in clear and noisy listening conditions, (2) examine ASD and TD perceivers' ability to detect asynchrony in AV speech, which is related to AV integration in typical perceivers, and (3) assess the gaze behavior of ASD and TD perceivers to a speaker's face. Limitations in productive language and difficulty with social interaction in low-functioning, non-verbal children with ASD have led to their under-representation in perceptual studies of speech. Thus, an additional goal of this application is to develop a training procedure for low-functioning, nonverbal children with ASD and younger TD children that will allow for their participation in perceptual studies of auditory and AV speech. RELEVANCE: The careful evaluation of sensitivity to visual information for speech has important practical and theoretical implications for the understanding of perceptual processing of speech in high-functioning children with ASD, including in (1) the identification and characterization of AV integration deficits and (2) the design of targeted interventions. Further, the development of a training procedure for non-verbal low-functioning children with ASD and for younger, TD children will allow for greater understanding of perceptual processing of speech in non-verbal children and serve as a model for future intervention.