Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Question 1

1.Describe Neurodevelopmental disorders.

Answer 1

These are disorders that effect the brain or the central nervous system (CNS).	They are present before birth, at birth or occur in the first years of life.

Question 2

2. Name 4 Neurodevelopmental disorders.

Answer 2

Autism 	Down Syndrome 	Dyslexia 	Williams Syndrome

Question 3

3. Name characteristics common to Neurodevelopmental Disorders that may impact on music perception and cognition

Answer 3

Motor difficulties Sensory difficulties Perceptual difficulties Memory difficulties Difficulties in extracting structures from auditory stimuli

Question 4

4. Describe Autism

Answer 4

Autism Spectrum: Cognitive Impairment Not universal. IQ ranges between low and very high

• Persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts.
• Restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour, interests, or activities.

Question 5

5. What did Kanner (1943) find in autism case studies?

Answer 5

Kanner (1943). Unusual musical skills noted in 6 of the 11 cases discussed.Case 2 “at two and a half he sang about twenty or thirty songs”Case 9 “by a year and half he could discriminate between 18 symphonies and recognised the composer as soon as the first movement started”Case 10 “Child heard the father whistling and immediately identified it as Mendelssohn’s violin concerto”

Question 6

6.What is the Weak Central Coherence Theory?

Answer 6

Theweak central coherence theory(WCC), also called thecentral coherence theory(CC), suggests that a specificperceptual-cognitivestyle, loosely described as a limited ability to understand context or to “see the big picture”, underlies the central disturbance inautismand relatedautism spectrum disorders.Autism is characterised by a cognitive style that biases processing in favour of local features at the expense of global context-dependent meaning or Gestalt.(Happé, 1999)

Question 7

7. What did(Hobson, 1989) illustrate?

Answer 7

Affective (emotional) and interpersonal deficits are the core impairments in autism.

Question 8

8.Pitch discrimination and memoryin children with autismParticipants: musically untrained children with autism (HFA) and normal development match on CA, VIQ & Non- VIQMethod: paired learning paradigmTones and word fragments paired with visual images

Answer 8

Featural processing bias (described in cognitive theories of autism) manifested in unusual pitch processing.Search for deficits global, context-dependent meaning or Gestalt.Chords involve grouping processes. They provide important information about musical key.

Question 9

9.Dowling: represent melodies 2 ways what are they?

Answer 9

(1) contour (shape)(2) detailed representation (intervals)Hypothesis. Children with autism will represent unfamiliar melodies in detailed form.

Question 10

10. State evidence that autistic people can perceive small pitch changes without musical training.

Answer 10

Case study of adolescent boy without music training showed highly analytic perception of contours (Heaton et al., 1999)Mottron et al.,(2000) carried out a musical contour task with autistic adults and obtained similar findings.But this did not seem to limit the participants (e.g. they weren’t stuck on pitch cues) because they could recognise melodies in transposition

Question 11

11.Autistic participants outperform matched controls on what?

Answer 11

Pitch discrimination Pitch memoryStudies testing “global processing” (e.g. chords & melodies) failed to reveal any group differencesAutistic children showed thesame pattern ofperformance astypical childrenand adults • (Heaton, • Williams,Cummins & • Happe, 2007)

Question 12

12. What is dyslexia?

Answer 12

Dyslexia is a learning difficulty that primarily affects the skills involved in accurate and fluent word reading and spelling.Characteristic features of dyslexia are difficulties inphonological awareness, verbal memory and verbal processing speed.Dyslexia occurs across the range of intellectual abilities.It is best thought of as a continuum, not a distinct category, and there are no clear cut-off points.

Question 13

13. Name studies illustrating difficulties in dyslexics.

Answer 13

Other cognitive difficulties observed in Dyslexia Short-term memory (Jorm et al., 1986) otor skills (Nicolson & Fawcett, 1994) Auditory and Visual Perceptual problems (Tallal et la., 1993) Rapid perceptual processing deficits (Tallal et al., 1993)

Question 14

14. What did Overy 2003 find?

Answer 14

Overy, 2003Compared a group of Dyslexic children with age matched TD controls and observed no deficits in pitch processing in the dyslexic group.1) melody discrimination (matching 3 tone melodies)2) pitch discrimination (same/different)3) pitch matching (child found the note on the keyboard)

Question 15

15. What area of musical skills have studies shown dyslexics may suffer from?

Answer 15

Dyslexic children similar to controls on tests measuring perception of metre but impaired on rhythm skills and rapid skillsRhythm: (1) repeating back rhythms (2) discriminating two rhythmic fragments (3) tapping rhythm to happy birthday whilst singing itRapid skills: (1) saying whether high or low C came first (2) saying how many taps they had heard (3) saying whether two groups of taps had the same number of notes

Question 16

16. DescribeWilliams Syndrome

Answer 16

First described in the 1950sCan be diagnosed at birth by genetic or metabolic markersThe have a very uneven cognitive profile with relative sparing of some aspects of language (vocab & syntax) and very poor visuo-spatial skills.Levitin in a recent documentary worked with a 22 year old woman who could not tie her shoes or tell the time (even 1 second) but could sing many pop songs perfectly.

Question 17

17.Several Researchers have proposed that “musical abilities” are “enhanced” in WS name them.

Answer 17

Levitin et al., 2004118 individuals with WS screened using a questionnaire.Parents reported increased musical interests and heightened emotional responsiveness to musicEvidence suggests that musical activity is associated with increased well being in this group(Dykens et al., 2005)Jarvinen-Pasley et al., (2009) showed thatemotionally evocative music facilitated aspects of social behaviour

Question 18

18. What is a problem with the current WS research on music and emotion?

Answer 18

No well conducted studies on music emotion recognition in participants with WS Consensus about increased levels of anxiety in WS (Review: Martins et al., 2008)

Question 19

19.Is emotion processing domain specific or domain general?

Answer 19

Many, but not all experimental studies into emotion processing in autism have revealed deficits. Studies testing emotion recognition in Williams Syndrome have revealed deficits relative to typically developing (TD) controls and children with autism
* Most studies have used face stimuli when they can not read facial cues well

Question 20

20.Where do studies misunderstand the ability for autistic or WS to perceive emotions in music?Peretz (2001)as music serves social ends, people with autism would not be expected to develop an emotionally responsive system for music so that it would have a different meaning for them.

Answer 20

This view, also proposed by Oliver Sachs, Daniel Levitin and David Huron is based on a misconception of the emotion processing abnormalities in autism as well as an assumption that social communication deficits are unique to autism

Question 21

21. WS patients meet the criteria for what other neurodevelopmental disorder?

Answer 21

Williams SyndromeExperience difficulties in understanding emotions that may be more severe than those observed in autismHave similar difficulties to people with autism on ToM tasksA significant proportion of individuals with WS meet criteria for autism

Question 22

22. Do people with autism understand music?

Answer 22

The findings clearly show that people with autism do “get” musicThey often find it difficult to understand and describe their own feelings and this may generalise to musicIstvan Molnar-Szakacs et al., (2009)Investigated the perception of emotion in music in children with autismTheir behavioural data showed that children with autism recognise simple musical emotions as well or better than typical childrenTheir fMRI data showed that musical emotions activate the same neural mechanisms in autism as in typical persons.

Question 23

23. What did Fancourt 2013 state?

Answer 23

Children with Specific Language Impairment have marked deficits in working memory and delays in pitch discrimination. They recognise emotions in music as well astypical developing (TD) age-matched control children.

Question 24

24. Sumerise neurodevelopmental fact finding.

Answer 24

Studies of music perception in Neurodevelopmental Disorders must take account of the profiles of strengths and weaknesses characterising them.Some of these difficulties can be remediated by appropriately targetted music therapeutic approaches