Too Close to Focus? Neural Evidence of Altered Auditory Spatial Attention in Autism

Journal article, 2025

Background: Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often display unusual auditory processing. However, intensity-based auditory spatial attention has been less studied in children with autism. Since attention to the source of sound is crucial for communication and learning in these children, it is necessary to investigate this aspect of auditory attention in this population.
Methods: Event-related potentials (ERP) data were recorded from 12 high-functioning boys with ASD and 15 age-matched typically developing (TD) boys (ages 7–12) while passively listening to short Romanian sentences presented at three simulated distances (0.5 m, 1 m, 2 m). Stimuli were normalized and their intensity (65, 59, and 53 dB SPL) was adjusted to simulate depth. The P300 component of ERPs was extracted and analyzed for amplitude and latency using Python and SPSS. Statistical analyses included MANOVA and follow-up ANOVAs.
Results: No significant multivariate effects of group were observed at any distance. However, in univariate between-group analyses at 0.5 m, the ASD group showed significantly shorter P300 latencies compared to the TD group (p = 0.046, partial η² = 0.150). The differences at 1 m and 2 m were not statistically significant.
Conclusions: Children with ASD exhibited altered neural responses to nearby speech stimuli, indicating atypical auditory spatial processing and potentially increased cognitive demands during close-distance speech perception. These results align with theories of social attention and impaired sensory processing in autism.