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Sensory Abnormalities Impact on Language Ability in Autism Spectrum Disorder
Sensory abnormalities have been found to be highly prevalent in children and adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). These manifest as a hypoactive response to sensory input (reduced or absent response), hyperactive response (increased or excessive response), or sensory seeking behaviors (craving or fascination with certain sensory experiences). Research has shown that these sensory disturbances appear early in development, yet it is not clear whether they exert cascading effects on higher cognitive processes like language ability.
Objectives:
We aimed to investigate the relationship between severity of sensory disturbances in children and adolescents with ASD and language ability across both structural and pragmatic language domains. In addition, we were interested in whether language ability is impacted by the type of sensory abnormality (i.e., hyporesponsive, hyperresponsive, or sensory seeking).
Methods:
We used a short sensory questionnaire (Boyd, McBee, Holtzclar, Baranek, & Bodfish, 2009) to create subgroups based on overall sensory severity, and the presence of hyporesponsive, hyperresponsive, and sensory seeking behaviors in a sample of 68 children and adolescents with ASD (mean age: 10.6 years, range 5.9 – 17.9 years; mean IQ: 95.6, range 40-139; 10% female). To examine the relationship between sensory features and language ability, we used Mixed Model ANOVAs to compare the sensory subgroups on their mean subscale scores on the Children’s Communication Checklist-2 (CCC-2; Bishop, 2003). The CCC-2 is a parent report measure of language functioning with eight subscales including both structural aspects of language (e.g., ‘Syntax,’ ‘Semantics’) as well as pragmatic aspects (e.g., ‘Use of Context,’ ‘Nonverbal Communication’).
Results:
Children and adolescents with ASD in the high severity sensory subgroup were found to have significantly more impaired language scores compared to the low severity sensory subgroup (F(1, 46) = 10.2, p < .001) on all CCC-2 subscales except ‘Nonverbal Communication’ (p = .110). When grouped by the presence of hyporesponsive sensory behaviors, no significant differences were found on language scores between groups (F (1, 66) = 2.58, p = .113). However, when grouped by the presence of hyperresponsive behaviors, there was a significant main effect of group (F (1, 66) = 4.6, p < .05), with the hyperresponsive group demonstrating more impaired scores on ‘Semantics’ and ‘Use of Context.’ Similarly, the sensory seeking group showed significantly more impaired scores on the ‘Syntax’ and ‘Semantics’ subscales compared to individuals without sensory seeking behaviors (F (1, 66) = 5.88, p < .05).
Conclusions:
Our results suggest that the sensory abnormalities seen in ASD may have downstream effects on both structural and pragmatic language ability, demonstrated by the finding that individuals with more severe sensory scores showed significantly worse language scores. In addition, the type of sensory disturbance may differentially affect aspects of language, with hyperresponsive and sensory seeking behaviors having a greater impact on language ability.