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Brain Advance Access published online on August 22, 2003
Brain, doi:10.1093/brain/awg274
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© 2003 The Guarantors of Brain

Article

Absence of auditory ‘global interference' in autism

Jessica M. Foxton 1*, Mary E. Stewart 2, Louise Barnard 1, Jacqui Rodgers 1, Allan H. Young 1, Gregory O'Brien 3, and Timothy D. Griffiths 1

1 University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
2 Department of Psychiatry, Royal Edinburgh Hospital, Edinburgh, UK
3 Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

* Corresponding author. E-mail: j.m.foxton{at}ncl.ac.uk.

Received 4 April 2003 ; revised 23 June 2003 ; accepted 26 June 2003

Abstract

There has been considerable recent interest in the cognitive style of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). One theory, that of weak central coherence, concerns an inability to combine stimulus details into a coherent whole. Here we test this theory in the case of sound patterns, using a new definition of the details (local structure) and the coherent whole (global structure). Thirteen individuals with a diagnosis of autism or Asperger's syndrome and 15 control participants were administered auditory tests, where they were required to match local pitch direction changes between two auditory sequences. When the other local features of the sequence pairs were altered (the actual pitches and relative time points of pitch direction change), the control participants obtained lower scores compared with when these details were left unchanged. This can be attributed to interference from the global structure, defined as the combination of the local auditory details. In contrast, the participants with ASD did not obtain lower scores in the presence of such mismatches. This was attributed to the absence of interference from an auditory coherent whole. The results are consistent with the presence of abnormal interactions between local and global auditory perception in ASD.

Keywords: audition; autism; contour; pitch; weak central coherence
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