Auditory stream segregation in children with Asperger syndrome

Individuals with Asperger syndrome (AS) often have difficulties in perceiving speech in noisy environments. The present study investigated whether this might be explained by deficient auditory stream segregation ability, that is, by a more basic difficulty in separating simultaneous sound sources from each other. To this end, auditory event-related brain potentials were recorded from a group of school-aged children with AS and a group of age-matched controls using a paradigm specifically developed for studying stream segregation. Differences in the amplitudes of ERP components were found between groups only in the stream segregation conditions and not for simple feature discrimination. The results indicated that children with AS have difficulties in segregating concurrent sound streams, which ultimately may contribute to the difficulties in speech-in-noise perception. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.