Research Article

Perception of emotion in musical performance in adolescents with autism spectrum disorders

  1. Anjali Bhatara1,*,
  2. Eve-Marie Quintin2,
  3. Bianca Levy1,
  4. Ursula Bellugi3,
  5. Eric Fombonne4,
  6. Daniel J. Levitin1

Article first published online: 17 AUG 2010

DOI: 10.1002/aur.147

Issue

Autism Research

Autism Research

Volume 3, Issue 5, pages 214–225, October 2010

Additional Information

How to Cite

Bhatara, A., Quintin, E.-M., Levy, B., Bellugi, U., Fombonne, E. and Levitin, D. J. (2010), Perception of emotion in musical performance in adolescents with autism spectrum disorders. Autism Res, 3: 214–225. doi: 10.1002/aur.147

Author Information

  1. 1

    Department of Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

  2. 2

    Psychology Department, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal, Quebec, Canada

  3. 3

    Laboratory for Cognitive Neuroscience, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California

  4. 4

    Department of Psychiatry, Montreal Children's Hospital, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

*Department of Psychology, McGill University, 1205 Avenue Penfield, Montreal, Que., Canada H3A 1B1

Publication History

  1. Issue published online: 21 OCT 2010
  2. Article first published online: 17 AUG 2010
  3. Manuscript Accepted: 14 JUN 2010
  4. Manuscript Received: 21 OCT 2009

Funded by

  • National Alliance for Autism Research (NAAR; now Autism Speaks). Grant Number: ♯066/DL/01-201-005-001-00-00
  • National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). Grant Number: ♯228175-04
  • National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Grant Number: HD 33113
  • National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). Grant Number: NS 22343
  • SSHRC
  • CFI
  • NIH

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Keywords:

  • autism spectrum disorders;
  • Asperger syndrome;
  • Williams syndrome;
  • music;
  • emotion perception;
  • auditory perception

Abstract

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are impaired in understanding the emotional undertones of speech, many of which are communicated through prosody. Musical performance also employs a form of prosody to communicate emotion, and the goal of this study was to examine the ability of adolescents with ASD to understand musical emotion. We designed an experiment in which each musical stimulus served as its own control while we varied the emotional expressivity by manipulating timing and amplitude variation. We asked children and adolescents with ASD and matched controls as well as individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) to rate how emotional these excerpts sounded. Results show that children and adolescents with ASD are impaired relative to matched controls and individuals with WS at judging the difference in emotionality among the expressivity levels. Implications for theories of emotion in autism are discussed in light of these findings.

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