Neurophysiological Processing of Rise Time in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

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Abstract
Objectives: Amplitude rise time (RT) is a critical acoustic cue for speech perception, playing an important role in auditory processing of both speech and non-speech sounds. This study examined neurophysiological processing of RT in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) compared to typically developing (TD) peers. Methods: EEG was recorded during passive presentation of pure tones with five RT values (15, 30, 60, 120, 240 ms) in 42 children (ASD: n = 21, TD: n = 21, aged 4–10 years). Linear mixed models were used to analyze latencies and amplitudes of P1 and N2 components of event-related potential. Results: Children with ASD and TD peers showed distinct patterns of neural modulation across RTs. TD children show general increase in latency and decrease in amplitude of ERP components with increase in RT. While this pattern holds for P1 latency also for children with ASD, P1 amplitude was reduced in ASD compared to TD peers specifically at shorter rise times (15–60 ms), indicating weaker encoding of rapid acoustic onsets. For N2 latency children with ASD showed an atypical drop at 60 ms compared to 30 ms RT. P1N2 amplitude reached its minimum at 60 ms RT in ASD contrasting systematic decrease from 15 to 240 ms RT in TD. Conclusions: Together, these findings suggest that children with ASD show a less systematic pattern of neural modulation across the rise time continuum, particularly in the range of rapid acoustic onsets (15–60 ms), while processing of more gradual onsets remains relatively intact.

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