Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by atypical behaviors in social environments and in reaction to changing events. While this dyad of symptoms is at the core of the pathology along with atypical sensory behaviors, most studies have investigated only one dimension. A focus on the sameness dimension has shown that intolerance to change is related to an atypical pre-attentional detection of irregularity. In the present study, we addressed the same process in response to emotional change in order to evaluate the interplay between alterations of change detection and socio-emotional processing in children and adults with autism. Brain responses to neutral and emotional prosodic deviancies (mismatch negativity (MMN) and P3a, reflecting change detection and orientation of attention toward change, respectively) were recorded in children and adults with autism and in controls. Comparison of neutral and emotional conditions allowed distinguishing between general deviancy and emotional deviancy effects. Moreover, brain responses to the same neutral and emotional stimuli were recorded when they were not deviants to evaluate the sensory processing of these vocal stimuli. In controls, change detection was modulated by prosody: in children, this was characterized by a lateralization of emotional MMN to the right hemisphere, and in adults, by an earlier MMN for emotional deviancy than for neutral deviancy. In ASD, an overall atypical change detection was observed with an earlier MMN and a larger P3a compared to controls suggesting an unusual pre-attentional orientation toward any changes in the auditory environment. Moreover, in children with autism, deviancy detection depicted reduced MMN amplitude. In addition in children with autism, contrary to adults with autism, no modulation of the MMN by prosody was present and sensory processing of both neutral and emotional vocal stimuli appeared atypical. Overall, change detection remains altered in people with autism. However, differences between children and adults with ASD evidence a trend toward normalization of vocal processing and of the automatic detection of emotion deviancy with age.

中文翻译：

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自闭症谱系障碍中的情绪韵律变化检测：儿童和成人的电生理研究

自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的特征是社交环境中的非典型行为以及对不断变化的事件的反应。虽然这种症状的发展以及非典型的感官行为是病理学的核心，但大多数研究仅研究了一个方面。对相同维度的关注表明，对变化的不宽容与非常规的注意异常检测有关。在本研究中，我们研究了应对情绪变化的相同过程，以评估自闭症儿童和成人的变化检测变化与社会情感加工之间的相互作用。大脑对中性和情绪韵律异常（失配负（MMN）和P3a的反应，反映了变化的检测和对变化的关注方向，分别记录在患有自闭症的儿童和成人以及对照组中。比较中性和情绪状况可以区分一般性异常和情绪性异常效应。此外，当他们不偏离评估这些声刺激的感觉处理时，记录了它们对相同的中性和情绪刺激的大脑反应。在对照组中，变化检测是通过韵律来调节的：在儿童中，其特征是情感性MMN偏向右半球，而在成年人中，情感性MMN早于中立性MMM。在ASD中，与对照组相比，较早的MMN和较大的P3a观察到总体非典型变化检测，提示对听觉环境中任何变化的注意力异常定向都不同寻常。而且，在自闭症儿童中，异常检测显示MMN振幅降低。除了自闭症儿童，与成人自闭症相反，韵律没有对MMN的调节作用，中性和情绪性声刺激的感觉处理似乎是非典型的。总体而言，自闭症患者的改变检测仍然有所改变。然而，患有ASD的儿童和成人之间的差异表明，声音处理趋于正常化，并且随着年龄的增长自动识别情绪异常。