Auditory Statistical Learning Deficits in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Comparison of Visual and Auditory Segmentation Paradigms

Abstract

This study involved 30 children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) aged 7–10 years and 31 typically developing (TD) children who were matched for age and IQ. The participants’ performance on visual and auditory statistical learning tasks within a segmentation paradigm was assessed. Generalised linear mixed models (GLMMs) and linear mixed models (LMMs) were used to analyse response accuracy and reaction times, respectively. The aim was to explore the characteristics of statistical learning in children with ASD. The results showed that the children with ASD failed to perform above chance level on the auditory statistical learning task (p = 0.156). Only 40% of ASD participants performed better than expected by chance. Their performance was significantly lower than that of the TD children. Conversely, children with ASD performed significantly above chance level in the visual statistical learning task (p < 0.001). GLMM analysis revealed a significant interaction between group and task modality (p = 0.023). Specifically, children with ASD demonstrated significantly lower accuracy in auditory statistical learning than TD children (p < 0.001). In contrast, no significant difference was observed between groups in the visual task (p = 0.468). LMM analysis showed a significant interaction between group and task modality regarding reaction times (p = 0.020). Children with ASD exhibited significantly longer reaction times than TD children in both the visual and auditory tasks (ps < 0.001). These findings suggest that children with ASD have difficulty with auditory statistical learning, but perform relatively well in visual tasks within the segmentation paradigm.