- Autistic adults,regardless of whether clinically dx or self-identifying, report more difficulty processing auditory information, particularly others' speech. doi.org/10.1080/1499... New research by Elena Silva, Linda Drivers @lindadrijvers.bsky.social and myself 🧵
- Differences in sensory processing between autistic and nonautistic people are well known, I think, in general terms. But I've heard anecdotes for quite a while that autistic people find speech processing, particularly in noise, very challenging. But there didn't seem to be much evidence for it.Nov 17, 2025 18:30
- We used the Speech, Spatial and Qualities of Hearing Scale (SSQ) as a simple, short survey to see whether autistic adults indeed report lower auditory processing abilities than non autistic adults. We surveyed both clinically-diagnosed individuals and those who self-identify as autistic.
- We found that, across all domains of the SSQ (spatial perception, quality of sound, and speech understanding), the clinically diagnosed group reported more difficulties than the nonautistic group.
- What about the self-identifying group? They also differed significantly from nonautistic adults in the Speech domain. But interestingly, equivalence tests showed that their reports were statistically equivalent to the clinically diagnosed group! Indeed, plotting the group predictions highlights this
- The lack of difference between self identifying and clinically diagnosed individuals is likely due to statistical power. But the equivalence tests shows the importance of digging into this further, as those who self identify are also reporting similar experiences to those with a clinical dx
- Why are these results interesting? I hope it brings awareness to those who may not realize this is a common challenge and not something they are struggling with alone. More research can also bring better understanding of the underlying issues so we can think about how to accommodate these challenges
- I'm posting about this because Elena is not on Bluesky, but she was the one doing most of the work, as this was her masters thesis project. I personally wanted to see a project like this for a while so im excited it finally became reality! Thanks Elena!
