Learning about neurodiversity from parents - Auditory gestalt perception of prelinguistic vocalisations

Abstract

Background: Infants with Rett syndrome (RTT) may have subtle anomalies in their prelinguistic vocalisations but the detection of these is difficult, since their conspicuous vocalisations are often interspersed with inconspicuous ones.

Aims and methods: Extending a previous study with predominantly non-parents, the present study sampled parents of children with RTT and aimed to examine their gestalt perception of prelinguistic vocalisations.

Methods and procedure: Parents (n = 76) of female children with RTT listened to vocalisation recordings from RTT and typically developing (TD) infants, including an inconspicuous vocalisation from a RTT girl. For each recording, parents indicated if the vocalisation was produced by a RTT or a TD child.

Results: Overall correct to incorrect identification rate was 2:1, which was comparable to that of the previous study. Intriguingly, parents of RTT children seemed to be sensitive to features characterising the vocalisations of RTT infants, which has especially influenced their perception of the inconspicuous vocalisation from a RTT girl.

Conclusions and implications: These results invite further research on the potential characterising differences between vocalisations from TD infants and infants with divergent neurodevelopment.

Keywords: Auditory gestalt perception; Neurodiversity; Parent; Prelinguistic vocalisation; Rett syndrome.