Visual and Auditory Speech Perceptions in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders - Research Paper Example

Visual and Auditory Speech Perceptions in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders First of Visual and Auditory Speech Perceptions in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders Autism and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are terms used to describe disorders of brain development. There are various names for specific autistic disorder such as Asperger syndrome, autistic disorder and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified. Each of these disorders can occur in varying degrees of severity and are categorized by difficulties in social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication abnormalities. There may also be occurrences of repetitive behaviors. In addition, ASD may be linked to deficiencies in intelligence and motor coordination. There could also be other health issues such as gastrointestinal issues and sleep disorders (Autismspeaks.org, n.d.). As one can certainly tell, autistic spectrum disorder is a very serious disorder. ASD currently affects over 2 million people just in the United States. In the U.S. there has been a dramatic increase in past 40 years in terms of the number of people diagnosed with ASD. Currently, one out of every 42 boys and one in 89 boys are diagnosed with autism. Autism stems from very early brain development with the signs becoming recognizable by between two and three years of age (Autismspeaks.org, n.d.). Visual and Auditory Speech Perceptions Research has shown that children with autistic spectrum disorder may have difficulties with audio-visual integration. This could be related to their neuron system not functioning correctly. The importance of these studies is, of course, to evaluate the best methods for teaching an improving an ASD child’s visual and speech perceptions. Another reason for the studies is to determine exactly what the specific issues are so that even more specific training and possible cures can be developed. It is important to know if ASD children have deficits in only one area, either auditory or visual speech perception, or if they perceive mismatched audiovisual speech information differently than children without ASD. It is also important to determine if the severity of visual and speech perception varies according to the child’s severity of their ASD (Wyonaroaki, Kwakye, Foss-Feig, Stevenson, Stone, Wallace, 2013). In studies, children with ASD performed worse than their non ASD peers at seeing stimuli in unimodal conditions. An additional study found that there was no difference when stimuli was presented in a bimodal format, meaning two forms of stimuli being presented to the subject. This same study undertook the task of training ASD children in terms of developing their speech-reading ability. This training proved effective in that their visual accuracy improved the subjects’ ability to use visual cues when processing speech. This indicates that multi-modal training can be of benefit to children with ASD (Williams, Massaro, Peel, Basseler, & Suddendorf, 2004). The information from this study can be taken and directly applied to autistic programs throughout the United States, including school settings. Williams, et.al. defines speech as, “the process of imposing a meaningful perceptual experience on an otherwise meaningless speech input” (2004, p. 560). Being that autistic children have a brain abnormality, understanding the nuances of speech can prove to be difficult for them. That is why recognizing that understanding speech is a bimodal process is important for anyone working with autistic children. The process of understanding speech is based on seeing the speaker as well as hearing the sounds from the speaker (Williams, et. al., 2004). Children with ASD are known to have difficulties with social situations and contexts and reading facial expressions is one of those areas of difficulty. Thus, this can directly affect how well children with ASD truly understand speech. They are limited in the amount of visual information they know how to interpret (Williams, et. al., 2004). Thus, specific training on facial expressions could be effective in improving ASD children’s ability to not only better understand speech, but to fit in socially as well. One question regarding ASD is if the level of severity of one’s disorder is related to the severity level of their visual and auditory speech perception. Research has determined that there is a correlation between the two. Results show that a decreased ability to correctly perceive audiovisual stimuli relates directly to one’s severity of communication dysfunction. An interesting aspect of the study found that although a child’s level of severity relates to their communication ability, it does not relate to their impairments of social characteristics. In technical terms, the study found that children with ASD have atypical binding of audiovisual speech stimuli (Woynaroski, et al., 2013). In a real life application this means that although it is important to focus on improving a child’s communication and audio and visual perception, this should not be done in association with social skills instruction. In terms of social characteristics and interactions, the research study found that multisensory integration that ASD children employ may be linked with to their awkward responses to stimuli in everyday, authentic situations. Children with ASD have a decreased ability to integrate separate pieces of complicated social relevant information into meaningful responses, making them socially awkward (Woynaroski, et. al., 2013). A last outcome of the study shows that children with ASD were less likely to look at the speakers face during conversation (Woynaroski, et .al., 2013). While this fact has yet to be linked directly to deficits in visual and auditory perceptions in children with ASD, it is still important as it is a social skill that children need to learn in order to fit in with the exceptions of society. A study by Irwin, Tornatore, Brancazio, and Whalen (2011), researched just this issue. They set out to determine if children with ASD truly recognize and integrate visual speech perception less than their non ASD peers, or if they merely do not take this information in because they do not look at the speaker’s face. The study that this group conducted focused on tracking eye movements. This allowed them to determine if their visual speech deficits were caused by not looking at the speaker’s face or if there was a deficit in processing the stimuli. The study was done by attaching a magnetic sensor above the children’s eye. This device measured pupil coordinates so the researchers could tell exactly where the child was looking. It was found that even when the ASD children were looking at the speakers face, they were less visually influenced by what they say than children who do not have ASD. The researchers attributed this to either insufficient speechreading or an issue with integrating visual and auditory stimuli. The researchers discussed that young children with ASD do not spend time looking at faces, like their normal developing peers. This in turn, can affect their speech development which lasts their entire life (Irwin, Tornatore, Brancazio, & Whalen, 2011). These issues of tuning into a speaker’s face and lack of gaining visual cues when it comes to speech relates directly to the research that has been done on comprehension of emotions in ASD children. It is commonly believed that children with ASD are lower functioning in terms of understanding emotions and recognizing them in others than their typically developing peers. Research has supported this by finding that young children with ASD have difficulty with the relationship between visual facial expressions and affective prosody. Prosody is the rhythm, stress and intonation of speech (Matsuda, & Yamamoto, 2013). The research by Matsuda and Yamamoto (2013), went as far as deducing what training young children with ASD need in order to improve their comprehension of visual speech perceptions via facial expressions. They discovered that repeated listening to affective prosody is not enough for children with ASD to develop emotional understanding via facial expressions. However, they did discover that cross-modal MITS or other similar training is necessary to teach children with ASD the emotional meaning behind facial expressions. Cross-modal MIT training consists of using input in one sensory modality and redirecting it into another sense (Matsuda, & Yamamoto, 2013). Conclusion In general, it has been proven that children with ASD are less influenced by the visual aspects than their non ASD peers (Irwin, et. al., 2011). Research has also proven that deficits in communication are a primary characteristic of children with autistic spectrum disorder. It has also been demonstrated that these communication issues play a role in the behavior and cognitive deficits that these children face (Stevenson, Siemann, Woynaroski, Schneider, Eberly, Camarata & Wallace, 2013). The reasons for these deficits can be attributed to many research studies that have found that a ASD child’s lack of ability to correctly perceive visual and auditory speech signals are likely a result of a delay or malfunction in the integrative capacity of the ASD child (Stevenson, et.al, 2013). To sum it up “spoken communication skills are strongly reliant upon an individual’s ability to process not only the information contained within the auditory stream, but also on an ability to effectively process the visual cues that accompany and complement the auditory content” (Stevenson, et.al., 2013). In a practical sense, this research can be directly applied to those that work with ASD children such as teachers and parents. Knowing that direct instruction using a multi-modality approach works, according to the research, to improve an ASD child’s visual speech perception means that this is the instructional approach that should be used in order to get the most effective results. Research continues in this most important and interesting area of autistic spectrum disorder in children. Continued research will surely continue to bring about useful results in terms of working in the most useful manner with ASD children. References AutismSpeaks.org (n.d.). What is autism? Retrieved April 17, 2014, from http://www.autismspeaks.org/what-autism Irwin, J. R., Tornatore, L. A., Brancazio, L., & Whalen, D. H. (2011). Can children with autism spectrum disorder "hear" a speaking face? Child Development, 82(5), 1397-1403. Stevenson, R. A., Siemann, J. K., Woynaroski, T. G., Schneider, B. C., Eberly, H. E., Camarata, S. M., & Wallace, M. T. (2013). Brief report: Arrested development of audiovisual speech perception in autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism Developmental Discord. Matsuda, S., & Yamamoto, J. (2013). Intervention for increasing the comprehension of affective prosody in children with autism spectrum disorders. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 7, 938-946. Williams, J. H., Massaro, D. W., Peel, N. J., Bosseler, A., & Suddendorf, T. (2004). Visual-auditory integration during speech imitation in autism. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 25, 559-575. Woynaroski, T. G., Kwakye, L. D., Foss-Feig, J. H., Stevenson, R. A., Stone, W. L., & Wallace, M. T. (2013). Multisensory speech perception in children with autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism Developmental Discord, 43, 2891-2902. Read More