Abstract
The perception and the cerebral lateralization of spoken emotions were investigated in children and adolescents with high-functioning forms of autism (HFFA), and age-matched typically developing controls (TDC). A dichotic listening task using nonsense passages was used to investigate the recognition of four emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, and neutrality. The participants with HFFA did not differ significantly in overall performance from the TDC, suggesting that the pervasive difficulty in processing emotions is not uniformly present in emotions expressed verbally. Both groups demonstrated a left-ear effect for the perception of emotion in nonsense passages, consistent with overall right-hemisphere superiority for this function.
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Acknowledgments
The authors appreciate the contributions of the children and families who participated in these research activities. Portions of this research were presented at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Philadelphia, PA, November 2004.
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Appendix
Appendix
Four nonsense passages were produced. The nonsense passages, shown here in broad phonemtic transcription, were:
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Baker, K.F., Montgomery, A.A. & Abramson, R. Brief Report: Perception and Lateralization of Spoken Emotion by Youths with High-Functioning Forms of Autism. J Autism Dev Disord 40, 123–129 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-009-0841-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-009-0841-1