题目：Auditory processing and speech perception in autism: A neural specialization perspective

主讲人：于洛迪 特聘副研究员

时间：2019年1月3日（周四）16:00 - 17:00

地点：心理学院301会议室

内容简介：

Human auditory system transforms acoustic information into meaningful phonological units for speech understanding and does so in a language-specific manner. Aberrant auditory processing has been identified as a key factor underlying the pathological language processing in individuals with autism. However, studies with tonal language users and those with nontonal language users suggest differential expressions of abnormalities cross-linguistically, rendering a simple auditory account insufficient in characterizing speech perception deficits in autism. In this talk, I will present electrophysiological data probing the language-specificity in cortical representation of linguistic pitch information in school-age children with autism whose native language is Mandarin Chinese. The results demonstrated autism-related neural timing issues at various levels of information processing, as well as reduced neural specificity in the processing pitch-related phonological features. The findings support the idea of disrupted neural specialization for the acquisition and detection of linguistic structures in autism, and underscore the proposition that autism is bound with auditory and phonological disruptions in addition to the syndromic social and communication deficits.