Music as a means of investigating perception of emotion and social attribution in typical development and in autism spectrum disorders

This thesis uses music as a means of investigating both typical and atypical perception of emotion and attribution of social intent. The primary aim of this thesis is to investigate this perception and attribution in indviduals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and compare this with typical adults and children. Chapter 1 comprises a literature review of music and emotion, and of music cognition in individuals with ASD. The first manuscript (Chapter 2) describes the development of a new method for investigating perception of emotion from musical performance. Using this method, we found that typical adults can reliably rate the emotional content of musical performances which vary in expressive parameters. In the second manuscript (Chapter 3), we used this method to examine the ability of adolescents with ASD to rate the emotional content of musical performance. We compared the group with ASD to a group of typically developing adolescents as well as a group of individuals with Williams syndrome (WS). The results of this study showed that adolescents with ASD are impaired in this kind of emotional recognition relative to both comparison groups. Emotional recognition is an important aspect of everyday social interactions, both in understanding and predicting others' actions. Thus, in the third manuscript (Chapter 4), we examined the effect of musical soundtracks on attribution of social action and intent in ASD by adding music to an established visual task. [...]Dans cette these, la musique est utili see pour investiguer la perceptiontypique et atypique des emotions ainsi que l' attribution d'intentions sociales.L' objectif premier est d' evaluer la perception des emotions et des intentionssociales chez des individus presentant un trouble du spectre autistique (TSA) enles comparant a des .adultes et des enfants dont le developpement est typique. Lepremier chapitre est consacre a une revue de la litterature portant sur la musiqueet les emotions ainsi que sur la cognition de la musique chez des individuspresentant un TSA. Le premier manuscrit (chapitre 2) porte sur le developpement d'une nouvelle methode permettant d'evaluer la perception desemotions associees a des performances musicales. [...