Caicai Zhang

Purpose: This study investigated the nature and underlying mechanisms of phonological awareness and literacy impairments in Cantonese-speaking adults with congenital amusia (amusia hereafter) while accounting for the potential role of dyslexia traits. Method: Twenty-one Cantonese speakers with amusia and 21 matched controls were assessed using segmental (onset phoneme deletion and spoonerism) and suprasegmental (tone oddity) phonological awareness tasks, literacy tasks (word reading, 1-min word reading, and dictation), and auditory perception threshold tasks (pitch discrete, pitch glide, and rise time). Results: The amusia group significantly underperformed the control group on all phonological awareness tasks as well as on word reading. Within the amusia group, 38% of participants exhibited dyslexia traits. Subgroup analyses distinguishing between individuals with pure amusia and those with amusia and comorbid dyslexia traits further revealed that individuals with pure amusia still demonstrated difficulties in spoonerism and tone oddity, but not in onset phoneme deletion and word reading. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that pitch height perception was a significant predictor of amusical participants' performance in spoonerism and tone oddity. Conclusions: The results suggested that the amusia group has deficits in segmental phonological awareness under the high-memory-load condition, as well as deficits in suprasegmental phonological awareness associated with impaired pitch height perception. Although the amusia group as a whole also showed segmental phonological awareness deficits under the low-memory-load condition and word reading deficits, these group-level deficiencies were largely driven by the amusia subgroup with dyslexia traits. These findings highlight the importance of taking dyslexia status into account in amusia studies. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.33288876

Facial emotion perception depends on integrating facial cues with concurrent affective context, yet autism research has largely examined context effects using speech, making it unclear whether reported differences reflect linguistic demands, auditory affect cues, or cross-modal integration more generally. We asked how autistic children weight congruent versus incongruent auditory emotion context during face processing over time, and whether these dynamics differ for speech prosody versus music melody, two affective signals with overlapping acoustic cues but only one with a linguistic carrier. Autistic children, typically developing (TD) children, and TD adults (n=105; 35 per group) completed an auditory-to-visual affective priming EEG task. Participants heard happy, sad, or angry primes (prosody or melody) followed by emotion-congruent or -incongruent facial expressions. Auditory context modulated face processing in a stage- and modality-dependent manner. In the late positive potential (LPP), congruency effects differed by group and modality: following music primes, autistic children showed larger late positivities to incongruent than congruent faces over centro-parietal sites, whereas TD children showed the opposite pattern. Following speech prosody primes, both child groups showed larger late positivities over parieto-occipital sites for congruent than incongruent faces. Exploratory trial-level analyses linked late congruency effects primarily to uncertainty in acoustic affect cues, while speech-only predictability was associated with N170 congruency modulation. Overall, affective-context use in autistic children was condition-dependent rather than uniformly reduced, and contrasting speech and music helped dissociate acoustic, linguistic, and integrative influences across processing stages.

The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between sleep behaviors and receptive vocabulary in bilingual autistic children. While the facilitating role of sleep in language development is well established in typically developing (TD) children, autistic children commonly experience both sleep disturbances and language difficulties. However, little is known about the relationship between these factors, particularly with respect to second language (L2) vocabulary development. This cross-sectional study addresses this important and underexplored issue. We examined sleep behaviors in 36 autistic children and 40 typically developing (TD) children (aged 5-10 years) in Hong Kong using a parent-administered sleep questionnaire, the Children's Sleep Habits Questionnaire (CSHQ). Receptive vocabulary in the first language (L1) and L2 receptive was assessed using standardized tests. Autistic children exhibited significantly greater sleep disturbances than their TD peers, including more frequent night wakings and parasomnias (e.g., bedwetting, sleep talking, and teeth grinding). Importantly, sleep disturbances in autistic children were adversely associated with L2 vocabulary scores (daytime sleepiness: B = -2.26, p = 0.019), but less so with L1. Autistic children who experienced greater daytime sleepiness showed lower L2 vocabulary scores, likely reflecting reduced attention and working memory in the cognitively demanding context of L2 learning. These findings highlight the association between sleep behaviors and L2 vocabulary in autistic children. Future longitudinal and intervention-based research should further investigate the directionality of these relationships.

This study investigated how listeners’ language and music backgrounds jointly affect their non-native tone perception in the low variability condition, where tones were constantly borne by a fixed syllable, and in the high variability condition, where tones were always carried by different syllables. Using an AX discrimination task combined with low and high syllable variability manipulation, we asked four participant groups, including Mandarin-L1 monolinguals and Mandarin-L1 and Cantonese-L2 bilinguals with or without musical training, to make tone comparisons in Teochew, a complex tonal language unknown to them. Results of mixed-effects models on the sensitivity d’ values showed that all groups obtained higher d’ values when perceiving contour tones than level tones, and in the low variability condition than the high variability condition. This suggested effects of native phonology of tone on non-native tone perception and perceptual integration of non-native tones and syllables. Furthermore, bilinguals outperformed monolinguals in perceiving tones in the high variability condition, indicating bilinguals’ stronger ability to extract pitch information across stimulus variations. The bilingual advantage was also found in the perception of level tones, but not in contour tones, with musically trained bilinguals performing better than their non-musician peers. This suggested that listeners’ pitch sensitivity can be re-modulated by a tonal second language, with musicianship further amplifying this effect on non-saturated acoustic cues. Overall, these findings reveal that listeners’ previously acquired tonal languages and musical training integrally affect their non-native tone perception, and these combined effects are tailored by tone type and syllable variability. Both pedagogical and clinical implications are discussed.

The thermal environment during sleep influences sleep quality, yet the relationships among in-bedroom conditions, subjective thermal comfort, and sleep outcomes in real-world settings remain insufficiently characterized. To examine how bedroom thermal conditions influence thermal adaptation and subjective comfort, and how these factors relate to self-reported and objective sleep quality and next-day wakefulness, a one-week field study was conducted among 33 healthy university students in Hong Kong during early-to-mid summer (May–August). Results showed that higher bedroom temperatures were associated with warmer TSVs, greater dissatisfaction, and poorer self-reported sleep quality. Minimum dissatisfaction occurred at TSV ≈ −0.57 and approximately 24–24.6°C. Participants adapted primarily via bedding insulation and coverage; females selected higher insulation and showed lower dissatisfaction at cooler sensations. Cooler sensations were linked to better self-reported outcomes, whereas objective metrics showed limited associations with temperature. Mixed-effects models identified air temperature as the dominant predictor of TSV and satisfaction. A negative temperature × insulation interaction indicated that the warming influence of insulation was strongest at lower temperatures and diminished as temperature rose. For satisfaction, a positive interaction suggested attenuation of the adverse main effects at higher temperatures. Improved thermal satisfaction from one night to the next was associated with modestly lower next-day sleepiness at select times. It is concluded that in real-world summer bedroom conditions, maintaining slightly cool bedrooms (~23–25°C) and enabling adaptive bedding can minimize dissatisfaction and support better perceived sleep. Predictive models incorporating temperature and insulation—and their interaction—capture key aspects of sleeping thermal comfort.

Handwriting plays a crucial role in literacy development, especially in logographic systems such as Chinese. Many children experience developmental difficulties in acquiring handwriting skills, a specific learning disorder known as developmental dysgraphia. However, there is a lack of systematic review on the neurocognitive processes underlying different types of developmental dysgraphia in Chinese. To fill in this gap, we first propose a cognitive model of Chinese character handwriting based on adult research. Unlike stage-based theory that assumes distinct mechanisms for adults and children, our review supports the continual development theory, suggesting that similar cognitive stages operate across both child and adult handwriters. Based on the cognitive model of handwriting, we identify five categories of developmental dysgraphia, including surface dysgraphia, phonological dysgraphia, deep dysgraphia, graphemic buffer dysgraphia, motor-spatial dysgraphia, and then review on the relationship between dyslexia and dysgraphia. We systematically review their behavioural syndromes and associated brain regions in both alphabetic languages and Chinese, revealing neurocognitive mechanisms for each type. Finally, we examine current assessment tools for diagnosing dysgraphia, highlight their limitations, and call for development of more comprehensive assessments for developmental dysgraphia.

Reinforcement learning (RL) uses feedback evaluation that helps individuals learn how to adjust strategies based on the outcomes of their actions. This study explored systematic differences in a neural indicator of feedback sensitivity, measured by feedback related negativity (FRN), and its impact on RL behavior. Participants were separated into two groups based on the FRN-based neural indicator. The high feedback sensitivity (HFS) group, characterized by greater differentiation in FRN between feedback types (reward vs. punishment), exhibited poorer behavioral accuracy and reduced spatial targeting. In contrast, individuals with low feedback sensitivity (LFS), showing smaller neural differences across feedback types, demonstrated improved learning performance and spatial accuracy. These findings suggest that overreactive responses to feedback in the HFS group may disrupt the integration of information needed for learning, leading to poorer outcomes. Interestingly, a similar pattern to that of FRN and frontal theta power was observed in P300 amplitude, highlighting the potential role of reward salience and attention allocation in feedback-based learning. Overall, the findings indicate that reduced feedback sensitivity, as indexed by FRN, appears to support learning, providing insights into how adaptive learning can be enhanced.