Elevated "neural noise" has been advanced as an explanation of autism and autistic sensory experiences. However, functional neuroimaging measures of neural noise may be vulnerable to contamination by recording noise. This study explored variability of electrophysiological responses to tones of different intensities in 127 autistic and 79…

Purpose: The present brain--behavior study examined whether sensory registration or neural inhibition processes explained variability in the behavioral most comfortable level (MCL) and background noise level (BNL) components of the acceptable noise level (ANL) measure. Method: A traditional auditory gating paradigm was used to evoke neural…

The objective of this study was to investigate relationships between caregiver-reported sensory processing abnormalities, and the physiological index of auditory over-responsiveness evaluated using acoustic startle response measures, in children with autism spectrum disorders and typical development. Mean acoustic startle response magnitudes in…

A review of records was completed to determine whether children with auditory hypersensitivities have difficulty tolerating loud sounds due to auditory-system factors or some other factors not directly involving the auditory system. Records of 150 children identified as not meeting autism spectrum disorders (ASD) criteria and another 50 meeting…

Neural encoding of pitch in the auditory brainstem is known to be shaped by long-term experience with language or music, implying that early sensory processing is subject to experience-dependent neural plasticity. In language, pitch patterns consist of sequences of continuous, curvilinear contours; in music, pitch patterns consist of relatively…

Previous research implies that stereotypic behavior tends to be maintained by the sensory consequences produced by engaging in the response. Few investigations, however, have focused on vocal stereotypy. The current study examined the noncommunicative vocalizations of 4 children with an autism spectrum disorder. First, functional analyses were…