1 Kristyn Solie 25 November 2012 CS 118 Final Paper

Insights to Cognitive Workarounds:

The Emotional Processing of Language and Music in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) encompasses a wide range of neurodevelopmental disorders that cause deficits in socialization and communication, including a failure to understand social affective cues. This deficit reflects an underlying processing error in accurately reading and interpreting emotions. In an effort to find therapeutic approaches to mitigate these deficits, researchers have examined the emotional processing of language and music in children with ASD. It was hoped that music offered an alternative channel for accurately recognizing emotions as a prelude to decoding their cuing information. Based on their findings, the results have been insightful albeit mixed. The four studies I examined for this paper are representative of the important insights and mixed finding in this area of research. They include: Emotion Perception in Aspergers Syndrome and High-functioning Autism: The Importance of Diagnostic Criteria and Cue Intensity from Carla A. Mazefsky et al; Voice Processing Abilities in Children with Autism, Children with Specific Language Impairments, and Young Typically Developing Children from Jill Boucher et al; Do social and cognitive deficits curtail musical understanding? Evidence from autism and Down syndrome from Pamela Heaton et al; and Perception of Emotion in Musical Performance in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders from Anjali Bhatara et al. Based on

2 an analysis of these four studies, Autism Spectrum Disorder causes varied deficits to the processing of emotional cues in language and music. However, these deficits give us insight to the social and biological systems humans utilize in processing language and music cues, and shed light on possible workarounds for neurodevelopmental shortcomings. The ability to communicate and process emotion is crucial to an individuals survival. Emotions function as human radar, a reaction to the internal and external environment. They are an integral part of cognitive processing that encourages adaptive behaviors in response to environmental changes. Our ability to process emotions in both language and music relies heavily on biological factors. Interestingly, because emotion in music and emotion in language rely on similar mechanisms, there is a potentiality of shared neural mechanisms. The most obvious example comes from early childhood where mother-infant interactions are a blended dialogue of music and word, both rich in emotional and social cues. The biological basis for emotional processing of music relies on an idea of processing predispositions, essentially biological components that prepare humans to learn aspects of an auditory environment. This seems to parallel the theory of language processing is called the Ostensive Inferential Model which sees communication as contextual, where words are delivered in cuingpackets that contain both meaning and cuing information. This is particularly appropriate because vocal emotions and music emotions are very similar. Vocal expression and music are both nonverbal channels that rely on acoustic signals to transmit messages. Music performance uses largely the same emotion-specific patterns of acoustic cues, as does vocal

3 expression. Expression of emotion within music and speech is explained by Spencers Law, which suggests that emotions influence physiological processes, which in turn influence acoustic characteristics of both speech and singing. These acoustic similarities are a possible explanation for why typically developing listeners perceive music as expressive of emotion, and process it similarity to speech. There is much that is not understood about ASD and its affects on understanding of social affective cues, especially in relation to the processing of emotion in nonverbal speech. Nonverbal speech, or paralanguage, is the nonlexical component of communication by speech (like pitch, timbre and tempo). Many studies about emotion perception abilities have yielded inconsistent findings. Clara A. Mazefsky and Donald P. Oswald examine the processing of emotional tones in ASDi in Emotion Perception in Aspergers Syndrome and High-functioning Autism: The Importance of Diagnostic Criteria and Cue Intensity which sought to examine differences in the emotion perception accuracy of children within the Autism Spectrum. In this study, the paralanguage tasks required the participant to listen to 56 audiotaped presentations of the sentences, I am going out of the room now. I will be back later, as read by male and female child and adult professional actorsthe participant was asked to identify the tone of voice depicted as happy, sad, angry, or scared. All subtests had an equal number of cues that were low and high intensity (Mazefsky et al, 2007). The results showed drastic differences in the vocal processing abilities of those within the ASD who had a significantly lower mean percent of tone of voice cues correct (M = 52.98, SD = 17.68) than the

4 normative sample (M = 74.87, SD = 7.08) (Mazefsky et al, 2007). Interestingly, they especially struggled with low intensity tone of voice cues; which is important to note because, accuracy in the perception of low intensity cues is more closely related to social functioning than the perception of high intensity cues in typically-developing populations (Mazefsky et al, 2007). Those that fall within the Autism Spectrum might have greater difficulty processing emotional tones within a social setting. A similar study conducted by Jill Boucher, Vicky Lewis, and Glyn M. Collis, Voice Processing Abilities in Children with Autism, Children with Specific Language Impairments, and Young Typically Developing Children, sought to confirm existing findings showing that children with autism have impaired vocal aect naming. In this study, four experiments were conducted that measured vocal processing abilitiesii. Experiment 4 looks at vocal affect naming and vocal-facial affect matching, and asked test subjects to pick a photo that corresponded with an emotion communicated through an audiotape. It is important to note that this test was preceded by a training session that asked test subjects to do the same. Results concluded, the mean scores for the autism group were 135 (SD 779) (naming) and 1317 (SD 32) (matchingand for the typically developing children 1305 (SD 184) (naming) and 1584 (SD 18) (matching) (Boucher et al, 2000). The ability of the ASD children to match vocally and facially expressed emotions was impaired relative to the normative controls in Experiment 4. However, their ability to name vocally expressed emotions did not show a deficit. While it appears that this contradicts Mazefskys findings, the surprisingly good performance of the children with autism on this task resulted from the fact that children with autism are

5 specifically taught emotion naming. Some of the children with autism taking part in the experiment were in fact being taught to name basic emotions in the same week as they were tested, and our pre-test procedure of eliciting names for emotions may have reinforced this teaching (Boucher et al, 2000). This suggests that children within the Autism Spectrum might not have as much difficulty processing language as previously thought, or might be able to develop other ways of processing emotional cues. Even less is understood of the Autism Spectrum processing deficits involved with music, though it is often presumed that the social deficits generalize to music. This is explored more thoroughly in, Do social and cognitive deficits curtail musical understanding? Evidence from autism and Down syndrome, a study carried out by Pamela Heaton, Rory Allen, Kerry Williams, Omar Cummins and Francesa Happ. This studyiii aims to examine if emotion-processing deficits affect music processing the same way they affect the social domain. Processing music is more than understanding acoustic characteristics. Children ages 4 to 10 were required to match excerpts of music with schematic representations of feeling and movement states (Heaton et al, 2008). The experiment ultimately concluded that children with ASD, associate musical extracts with the same pictures as musical experts and typically developing children, suggest[ing] that they represent musical meaning similarly to those without social impairments (Heaton et al, 2008). These findings argue that despite struggles with understanding human expressions of emotion, ASD spectrum individuals are attuned to expressions of emotion within music. This seemingly contradicts the idea that music and language are processed in the same

6 way, and, furthermore, that ASD impairs the emotional understanding in music. However, musical expressionsdepend upon changes in a limited number of musical components, in these cases, in mode, tempo, and rhythm. As these feelings and movement states are characterized formulaically, they may be relatively easy to categorize (Heaton et al, 2008) specifically in a way that cannot be applied to spoken language. Heaton ultimately concludes that autism impacts different communication domains in different ways, suggesting that emotion processing deficits to not automatically generalize from the social to musical arena. Two years later, Anjali Bhatara, Eve-Marie Quintin, Bianca Levy, Ursula Bellugi, Eric Fombonne, and Daniel J. Levitin conducted a study called, Perception of Emotion in Musical Performance in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders which aimed to examine the ability of ASD individuals (compared to normative controls) to comprehend musical emotion by rating the level of emotion expressed in 20 second musical pieces. Unlike previous studies, researchers asked subjects to identify how much emotion was present rather than what kind of emotion. Results showed that the participants with ASD as responsive with the same expressive cuesas with typical development, however, the ASD group failed to differentiate among the expressivity levels for either the major or minor nocturnes (Bhatara et al, 2010). Previous experiments show that individuals within the Autism Spectrum are unimpaired in identifying musical emotions, however, in light of this study, children and adolescents with ASD are impaired in judging the amount emotional expressivity of music. This suggests that there are neural differences between identifying a specific emotion and being able to determine the level of an emotion

7 present. It is possible that, in the categorization studies the emotion was conveyed by the compositional as well as the performance cues, while in the present study the differential cues are only in the performanceAmong compositional cues, pitch is very important at conveying emotion, and pitch perception is a strength among individuals with ASD. (Bhatara et al, 2010). Without pitch cues present, as a means of differentiation, the level of emotion simply cannot be translated. Despite differing conclusions, these four studies agree that emotional cues interpreted from language and music relies on more than biological factors. Even when certain biological predispositions are not present, some individuals with ASD are still able to interpret emotional cues based on mechanisms developed socially rather than biologically. Emotional processing deficits in ASD individuals present an opportunity for greater social exposure as a means to combat neurodevelopmental shortcomings. In both language and music, the understanding of performance cues rely on neural mechanisms and may both be impaired for similar reasons. If such is the case, they might be fixed with similar solutions as well. All four authors seem to imply that these deficits can be aided with education and social exposure. In light of ASD issues with processing emotional cues, Mazefsky suggests the possibility, that children with AS are compensating for an emotion perception decit through different processing mechanisms (Mazefsky et al, 2007) and that parental discourse on emotions [might] mediate the relation between diagnosis and emotion perception accuracy (Mazefsky et al, 2007). Individuals with ASD might be using different processing systems than those without, which could possibly be attributed to parents/teachers specific focus on reinforcing these cues. Similarly, Boucher

8 suggests, explicit teaching facilitated emotion naming in the children with autism (Boucher et al, 2000) as an explanation for surprising results. Perhaps this is a possible solution for deficiencies in emotional processing. Regarding music as a therapeutic modality to improve emotional processing, Heaton argues, active listening is also characteristic of children with autismthis listening results in the acquisition of culturally embedded knowledge about musical meaning (Heaton et al, 2008). In other words, ASD individuals might improve their ability to process emotional cues through continued exposure to the music via absorption of cultural knowledge. This is enforced by the argument that an individuals understanding of emotions originates from early experience with social affective contacta lack of this early experience because of a neural abnormality could also lead to a lack of understanding of emotion through abstract expressions of emotions through speech (Bharta et al, 2012). Individuals with ASD may benefit from greater amounts of standard musical training or alternative forms of musical training with a potential to learn workarounds for multiple types of emotional processing. Autism Spectrum Disorder affects a wide range skills, with one of the most well known being the ability to process social affective cues. Deficits in the emotionanalysis ability of music and language in those with ASD provide insight to the cognitive capacities of both typically developing individuals and those with neurodevelopmental issues. Findings suggest that the processing of emotional cues is a byproduct of biological and social factors. Those with biological deficits may be

9 able to mediate said deficits through increased social exposure and instructional therapy.

10 Citations: Bhatara, A., Quintin, E.-M., Levy, B., Bellugi, U., Fombonne, E. and Levitin, D. J. (2010), Perception of emotion in musical performance in adolescents with autism spectrum disorders. Autism Res, 3: 214225. Boucher, Jill, Lewis, V. (Vicky) and Collis, Glyn. (2000) Voice processing abilities in children with autism, children with specific language impairments and young typically developing children. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, 41(7). Heaton, P., Allen, R., Williams, K., Cummins, O. and Happ, F. (2008), Do social and cognitive deficits curtail musical understanding? Evidence from autism and Down syndrome. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 26: 171182. Mazefsky, C., & Oswald, D. (2007). Emotion perception in Asperger's syndrome and high-functioning autism: the importance of diagnostic criteria and cue intensity. Journal Of Autism & Developmental Disorders, 37(6), 1086-1095.

End Notes
i

Mazefsky specifically studies children with Aspbergers Syndrome and High Functioning Autism, however, for the sake of this consistency, I am only examining results of those that fall within the Autism Spectrum. When this study was conducted in 2007, Aspbergers Syndrome was not yet considered part of the ASD. In instances where Maefsky refers to High Functioning Autism (HFA) I interpret as ASD. ii There are two important things to note in my analysis of this study. Firstly, Boucher examines children with Autism and children with Specific Language Impairments, but, again, for the sake of consistency, I will only examine the results that directly concern the Autism Spectrum. Secondly, because of the size of Bouchers study, I am only examining Experiment 4, which mirrors most closely Mazefskys study and examines vocal affect naming and matching (the other experiments involve recognizing voices and face-sound matching, which doesnt concern my topic). iii My analysis of this study focuses solely on the data gathered regarding autism, not Down syndrome.