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Enhanced Pitch Sensitivity in Individuals with Autism: a Signal Detection Analysis. Bonnel A, Mottron
L, Peretz I, Trudel M, Gallun E, Bonnel AM Abstract: J Cogn Neurosci. 2003 Feb 15;15(2):226-35 Findings Research has shown individuals with high-functioning autism (HFA) are better than typically developing individuals visually searching and discriminating items. Those with HFA are also better than controls in memorizing picture-pitch associations and detecting pitch changes in music. Especially intriguing are a subset of autistic individuals known as “musical savants,” who can identify exact (absolute) musical pitches and even play back complex pieces of music after hearing it once. This musical superiority may be a result of an abnormally high sensitivity to fine pitch differences in sounds. To test this hypothesis, Dr. Mottron and colleages
studied 12 high-functioning teenagers with autism (average 17.9 years)
who were musically untrained and a comparable group of 12 typically developing
teens (average 16.6 years), all of whom were tested for normal and comparable
hearing. Subjects were given two tests, each increasingly difficult: (1)
pitch discrimination, requiring individuals to discriminate between two
different tones or to judge if they were the same, (2) pitch categorization,
requiring individuals to categorize each tone presented as high or low
compared with a pure reference tone. Conclusions These findings confirm that pitch processing is enhanced in "high-functioning" autism. Superior performance in pitch discrimination and categorization confirms previous findings of enhanced visual and auditory performance. This enhanced sensitivity to different pitches may account for the observation that autistic individuals excel at music perceptual tasks, and for the ability of musical savants to determine absolute pitch. |