Abstract
This study examined the effect of attention on auditory processing in autistic individuals. Electroencephalography data were recorded during two attention conditions (passive and active) from 24 autistic adults and 24 neurotypical controls, ages 17–30 years. The passive condition involved only listening to the clicks and the active condition involved a button press following single clicks in a modified paired-click paradigm. Participants completed the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile and the Social Responsiveness Scale 2. The autistic group showed delayed N1 latencies and reduced evoked and phase-locked gamma power compared to neurotypical peers across both clicks and conditions. Longer N1 latencies and reduced gamma synchronization predicted greater social and sensory symptoms. Directing attention to auditory stimuli may be associated with more typical neural auditory processing in autism.
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This study was supported by a graduate student grant from the Organization of Autism Research to JC.
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JEC: Conception and design of the study, data collection and analyses, drafting and critical revision of the article. ECJ: data collection, analysis, drafting, and critical revision of the article.
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10803_2023_6040_MOESM1_ESM.tif
Supplementary figure 1 Regression plots showing the Group by Click interaction effect with estimated marginal means of A. phase-locked gamma and B. evoked gamma power across attention conditions for click 1 (blue) and click 2 (green) for the neurotypical and autism groups (TIF 59.3 kb)
10803_2023_6040_MOESM2_ESM.tif
Supplementary figure 2 Event-related potential (ERP) plots for individual participants. ERP for a neurotypical participant during the (A) passive condition and (B) active attention condition. ERP for an autistic participant during the (C) passive condition and (D) the active condition. The black line represents Click 1, and the red line represents Click 2. Positive voltage is up (TIF 138.5 kb)
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Crasta, J.E., Jacoby, E.C. The Effect of Attention on Auditory Processing in Adults on the Autism Spectrum. J Autism Dev Disord 54, 3197–3210 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-023-06040-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-023-06040-4