Recognition of Environmental Sounds in Autistic Children

Environmental sound recognition was tested in children with an autistic disorder, along with recognition of spoken words for the same target items, using a picture-matching task. No overall difference between sound and word recognition scores was observed for either autistic or normal subjects. However, those autistic children found to achieve high scores on the sounds also scored highly on a visual pattern matching task. Thus, a pattern-matching ability was found across two modalities, visual and auditory, in this subgroup of children with an autistic disorder. Possible relevance of this finding to hemispheric dominance (as reflected by handedness studies) in autism, and to the putative inabilities of these children to recognize affectual cues, are considered. These findings also have implications for clinical assessment, indicating that tests of pattern-matching may provide more specific information about preserved skills in the individual child with an autistic disorder. J. Am. Acad. Child Adolesc. Psychiatry, 1988, 27, 4:423–427.