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document
Enhanced pitch sensitivity in individuals with autism : a signal detection analysis . Past research has shown a superiority of participants with high-functioning autism over comparison groups in memorizing picture-pitch associations and in detecting pitch changes in melodies . A subset of individuals with autism , known as " musical savants , " is also known to possess absolute pitch . This superiority might be due to an abnormally high sensitivity to fine-grained pitch differences in sounds . To test this hypothesis , psychoacoustic tasks were devised so as to use a signal detection methodology . Participants were all musically untrained and were divided into a group of 12 high-functioning individuals with autism and a group of 12 normally developing individuals . Their task was to judge the pitch of pure tones in a " same-different " discrimination task and in a " high-low " categorization task . In both tasks , the obtained psychometric functions revealed higher pitch sensitivity for subjects with autism , with a more pronounced advantage over control participants in the categorization task . These findings confirm that pitch processing is enhanced in " high-functioning " autism . Superior performance in pitch discrimination and categorization extends previous findings of enhanced visual performance to the auditory domain . Thus , and as predicted by the enhanced perceptual functioning model for peaks of ability in autism ( Mottron & Burack , 2001 ) , autistic individuals outperform typically developing population in a variety of low-level perceptual tasks .
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Intervention_Physical
psychoacoustic tasks
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Intervention_Physical
pitch of pure tones
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Outcome_Mental
higher pitch sensitivity
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Outcome_Mental
categorization task .
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Outcome_Mental
pitch processing
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Outcome_Mental
pitch discrimination and categorization
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Outcome_Mental
visual performance
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Participant_Condition
high-functioning autism
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Participant_Sample-size
group of 12 high-functioning individuals with autism
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Participant_Sample-size
group of 12 normally developing individuals