自闭症者对音乐和言语音高的加工

自闭症是一种神经发展障碍，主要表现为社会互动障碍，语言交流困难以及刻板行为等症状。已有研究表明，在音乐方面，自闭症者不仅表现出较强的音乐音高知觉能力，而且在音乐表演方面也体现出某些优势。然而，在言语方面，自闭症者除了在言语音高轮廓分辨任务中得分较高外，对言语语调的知觉能力明显比正常人更差，同时，他们对言语语调的产生也存在障碍。本研究不仅可以推进音乐和言语对比研究，而且也为自闭症者言语康复提供借鉴。

Pitch Processing of Music and Speech in Autism

Autism is a neuron-developmental disorder referring to social interaction, speech communication, and stereotyped behavior. The prevalence rate of autism in China is 2.38/10,000. Many Chinese autistics miss the best intervention period due to the limited research and treatment. Parents of autistic children are therefore under great mental and social pressure. It has been shown that autistics have superior pitch perception of music. More specifically, autistics performed better in labeling pitch, discriminating pitch difference, and judging pitch direction, as compared to the controls. However, individuals with Asperger syndrome showed better performance to identify the tones embedded in chords and discords, although they did not demonstrate better for pitch discrimination as compared with the typically developing persons. With regard to pitch contour processing, there are two different theories: weak central coherence and enhanced perceptual functioning. The weak central coherence theory suggests that the central coherence tendency of autism is weakened, and autistics are difficult to integrate many elements into a whole, thus showing impairment in global processing and local processing preference when they discriminate melodic contour. The enhanced perceptual functioning indicates that autistics perform better in local processing of pitch contour, and they have no impairments in global processing. However, there are few empirical studies fully support the WCC theory or the EPF theory. That is, whether there are any advantages of the local processing or impairments of the global processing in autism still remains uncertain. However, it has been proved that autistics have normal or even better perception of pitch contour in general. Autistics showed poor perception of speech intonation, although they exhibited better ability to match pitch contour and visual analogy to the graph in speech. We argue that this may be due to the enhanced speech perception of subtle feature in autism. When autistics focus on the subtle feature, they may ignore others, even some key points. This limited attention may cause interference to other aspects of perceptual processing in autism. Moreover, high sensitivity to the subtle changes made autistics judge the same stimuli as different. Although autistics were able to match speech contour and visual analogy to the graph, they had difficulty in identifying “question vs. statement”. They had a tendency to judge question as statement. Little research focuses on production for both music and speech in autism. It has been reported that autistics sing and perform as well as the controls. However, they performed worse than the controls in speech production. In addition, autistics showed impaired speech imitation. In conclusion, with regard to pitch processing of music and speech in autism, many issues still remain uncertain. For example, researchers should pay attention to the different subjects of subgroup of autistics and add the sample size. Moreover, whether the advantage of music perception in autism would affect music emotion and comprehension activities remains to be further explored.