Auditory Perception and Learning
A-SOD often benefit from enhanced auditory perception that supports
their learning. A-SOD may exhibit more accurate hearing, as among
children A-SOD are less likely to misperceive auditory-visual speech
than A-NoSOD, Down syndrome, and typically developing peers (Bebko,
Schroeder, & Weiss, 2014). Moreover, among adolescents and young
adults, A-SOD, but not A-NoSOD, demonstrate high brain activity in
response to sound (Samson et al., 2015), and strong
abilities to distinguish between tones (Bonnel et al., 2010; also see
Yau et al., 2015) or identify musical notes (Jones et al., 2009).
Aversive hypersensitivity to sound more often occurs in A-NoSOD (Jones
et al., 2009) and has shown the largest adverse effect on classroom
learning among sensory modalities in autistic children and adolescents
(Ashburner, Ziviani, & Rodger, 2008; Howe & Stagg, 2016). Considering
that almost all autistic children “over”- or “under”-perform in
academic achievement in relation to their IQ score (Estes et al., 2011),
pain from ordinary sound may interfere with learning for many autistic
people (Stiegler & Davis, 2010; O’Connor, 2012; Williams et al.,
2021b). Aversive auditory hypersensitivity impedes learning how to
present oneself as non-autistic, as youth who masked their autism showed
less reactivity to noise in early life (Troyb et al., 2014).