Increased context adjustment is associated with auditory sensitivities but not with autistic traits

Abstract

Bayesian models of autism suggest that alterations in context-sensitive prediction error weighting may underpin sensory perceptual alterations, such as hypersensitivities. We used an auditory oddball paradigm with pure tones arising from high or low uncertainty contexts to determine whether autistic individuals display differences in context adjustment relative to neurotypicals. We did not find group differences in early prediction error responses indexed by mismatch negativity. A dimensional approach revealed a positive correlation between context-dependent prediction errors and subjective reports of auditory sensitivities, but not with autistic traits. These findings suggest that autism studies may benefit from accounting for sensory sensitivities in group comparisons. LAY SUMMARY: We aimed to understand if autistic and non-autistic groups showed differences in their electrical brain activity measured by electroencephalography (EEG) when listening to surprising tones infrequently embedded in a statistical pattern. We found no differences between the autistic and the non-autistic group in their EEG response to the surprising sound even if the pattern switched, indicating their ability to learn a pattern. We did find that, as subjective sensory sensitivities (but not autistic traits) increased, there were increasingly large differences between the EEG responses to surprising tones that were embedded in the different statistical patterns of tones. These findings show that perceptual alterations may be a function of sensory sensitivities, but not necessarily autistic traits. We suggest that future EEG studies in autism may benefit from accounting for sensory sensitivities.

Keywords: Bayesian; EEG; MMN; atypical perception; autism; precision; prediction errors; predictive coding.

FIGURE 1

Stochastic oddball paradigm. Participants listened to a stream of 500 ms tones drawn from either a narrow (left) or broad (right) distribution of frequencies. Probe tones of 500 Hz (black; standards) and 2000 Hz (blue; deviants) were inserted into the stream each constituting 10% of all tones

FIGURE 2

Psychometric profile of participants. (a) Autism quotient (AQ), (b) Sensory Perception Quotient‐auditory subscale score, (c) Beck Anxiety Inventory Score, (d) Beck Depression Inventory for neurotypicals (NT; orange), confirmed autistic (AS; green) and participants who identified as having received a diagnosis of an autism‐spectrum disorder, but which could not be confirmed during interview with a psychologist (other; blue)

FIGURE 3

Whole scalp results. Spatiotemporal statistical analysis revealed significant clusters for (a) main effect of surprise and (b) context × surprise interaction. 3D F‐statistic maps demonstrating significant spatiotemporal clusters where spatial dimensions are on the x–y plane and time is on the z‐axis. The 2D scalp maps are cross‐sections of the 3D maps, denoting time points of interest. Maps are displayed at p < 0.05 FWE corrected for the whole space–time volume. FWE, family‐wise error rate

FIGURE 4

Prediction error waveforms at Fz electrode. Mismatch response (difference in deviants > standards) for individual and (a) matched neurotypical (NT) and (b) autistic (AS) groups for narrow (red) and broad (wide) oddball contexts. Dotted lines in lighter colours are waveforms of individual participants and darker colours indicate the average waveform for the group. For each (c) NT and (d) AS group corresponding waveforms for standards (solid line) and deviants (dotted line) are shown for narrow (red) and broad (blue) contexts. Location of Fz electrode on scalp is shown at top right

FIGURE 5

Trait analysis. Correlations between autism quotient (top, panels a, b, c) and SPQ auditory subscale scores (bottom, panels d, e, f) with mean amplitude (μV) in the mismatch negativity time window. Differences between broad and narrow conditions are shown for delta‐MMN, delta‐standards, and delta‐deviant amplitudes. Neurotypical (NT; orange), autistic (AS; green) and unconfirmed autistic (other; blue)