Adults with ASD lack typical response to hearing their names

One of the earliest predictors of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in children is a diminished orienting response to the sound of their own names, and a new study by researchers in Belgium indicates that this phenomenon occurs in adults with ASD as well. 

Annabel Nijhof and colleagues collected data on 21 adults with high-functioning ASD and 21 age- and gender-matched neurotypical controls. The researchers recorded the participants’ electroencephalogram readings in response to hearing their own first names, the first names of familiar people, and the first names of unfamiliar people, interspersing these within a task that involved identifying an unrelated target sound. 

The researchers report that a response called late parietal positivity (PP) occurred in neurotypical participants, specifically in response to hearing their own names, indicating enhanced attention; this response did not occur in participants with ASD. The researchers note, “This group difference was associated with diminished activation in the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) in the adults with ASD.” A “familiarity effect” was seen on a separate measure, the N1 amplitude, in response to familiar names (own and other), and this did not differ between the two groups. 

The researchers say, “Our results contribute to recent theories arguing that social cognition problems in ASD may be caused by a specific deficit in self-other distinction, in which the rTPJ seems to play an important role.”

Citations

“Atypical neural responding to hearing one’s own name in adults with ASD,” Annabel D. Nijhof, Monica Dhar, Judith Goris, Marcel Brass, and Jan R. Wiersema, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Vol. 127, No. 1, 2018, 129-38. Address: Annabel D. Nijhof, Department of Experimental Clinical & Health Psychology, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium, [email protected].