A Spectrotemporal Correlate of Language Impairment in Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The final analysis included 35 children with autism and 15 neurotypical children after exclusions for failed imaging, motion or artifact problems, and diagnostic checks. Children with a Perceptual Reasoning Index score below 70 were excluded, so the findings do not apply to children with global cognitive delay. The participants were 6 to 10.9 years old, so the paper does not speak to younger children or adults. Within the autism group, 21 participants had symptoms of one or more additional non-autism diagnoses, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Non-verbal reasoning and language scores were highly correlated, so the study could not cleanly separate their contributions to the brain measure. The paper reports an association with a language score, not a treatment effect or a clinical cutoff for the brain measure.

Do not conclude that autism itself causes a different auditory brain response. The main model did not show a separate diagnosis effect, and the main finding was the association with language ability.