Adults and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders show greater difficulties comprehending speech in the presence of noise. Moreover, while neurotypical adults use visual cues on the mouth to help them understand speech in background noise, differences in attention to human faces in autism may affect use of these visual cues. No work has yet examined these skills in toddlers with ASD, despite the fact that they are frequently faced with noisy, multitalker environments. Children aged 2-5 years, both with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD), saw pairs of images in a preferential looking study and were instructed to look at one of the two objects. Sentences were presented in the presence of quiet or another background talker (noise). On half of the trials, the face of the target person speaking was presented, while half had no face present. Growth-curve modeling was used to examine the time course of children’s looking to the appropriate vs. opposite image. Noise impaired performance for both children with ASD and their age- and language-matched peers. When there was no face present on the screen, the effect of noise was generally similar across groups with and without ASD. But when the face was present, the noise had a more detrimental effect on children with ASD than their language-matched peers, suggesting neurotypical children were better able to use visual cues on the speaker’s face to aid performance. Moreover, those children with ASD who attended more to the speaker’s face showed better listening performance in the presence of noise. Young children both with and without ASD show poorer performance comprehending speech in the presence of another talker than in quiet. However, results suggest that neurotypical children may be better able to make use of face cues to partially counteract the effects of noise. Children with ASD varied in their use of face cues, but those children who spent more time attending to the face of the target speaker appeared less disadvantaged by the presence of background noise, indicating a potential path for future interventions.

中文翻译：

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读我的唇语！自闭症学龄前儿童对噪音中言语的感知及观察说话者面部的影响

患有自闭症谱系障碍的成人和青少年在有噪音的情况下理解言语有更大的困难。此外，虽然神经典型的成年人使用嘴巴上的视觉线索来帮助他们理解背景噪音中的语音，但自闭症患者对人脸的注意力差异可能会影响这些视觉线索的使用。尽管 ASD 幼儿经常面临嘈杂、多人交谈的环境，但还没有研究对他们的这些技能进行过研究。2-5 岁的儿童，无论是否患有自闭症谱系障碍 (ASD)，都会在优先观察研究中看到成对的图像，并被指示看两个物体中的一个。句子是在安静或其他背景谈话者（噪音）在场的情况下呈现的。在一半的试验中，说话的目标人的脸出现了，而一半的人没有脸。生长曲线模型被用来检查儿童看适当图像与相反图像的时间过程。噪音会影响 ASD 儿童及其年龄和语言相匹配的同龄人的表现。当屏幕上没有人脸时，噪音的影响在有和没有 ASD 的组中大致相似。但是，当面部出现时，噪音对 ASD 儿童的不利影响比语言匹配的同龄人要大，这表明神经典型的儿童能够更好地利用说话者脸上的视觉线索来提高表现。此外，那些更关注说话者面部的 ASD 儿童在有噪音的情况下表现出更好的听力表现。有和没有 ASD 的幼儿在另一个说话者在场的情况下理解言语的表现都比安静时更差。然而，结果表明，神经典型的儿童可能能够更好地利用面部线索来部分抵消噪音的影响。患有 ASD 的儿童在使用面部线索方面各不相同，但那些花更多时间关注目标说话者面部的儿童似乎不会因背景噪音的存在而处于不利地位，这表明未来干预的潜在途径。