The project, entitled “Cracking the pitch code in music and language: Insights from congenital amusia (CA) and autism spectrum disorders (ASD),” is funded by a European Research Council Starting Grant (ERC-2015-StG, 678733, CAASD, 2016-2021) to Dr Fang Liu (University of Reading, UK), with Professor Cunmei Jiang (Shanghai Normal University, China) as a project partner.
There are 3 studies running in the CAASD (Congenital Amusia/ASD) lab that are recruiting participants.
For people who have already participated in CAASD Lab studies, please just follow the links and sign up this way. Anyone who is new to the Lab please email caasd.reading@gmail.com about your interest as you will need do an initial screen and eligibility test.
Magic Study
Participants needed: Adults (16+) native British English speakers with an ASD diagnosis.
This study involves 6 tasks, which will be conducted in the following order:
- Speech/Song perception (Part 1) in which you will be judging how speech- or song-like the presented sounds are
- Cognitive tasks in which you will be completing several standardised tasks as a test of your cognitive abilities
- Trustworthy/Dominant perception (Part 1) in which you will be judging how trustworthy- or dominant the presented sounds are
- Speech/Song perception (Part 2) in which you will be judging how speech- or song-like the presented sounds are
- Magic tasks in which there are three subtasks and you will be figuring out how a magic trick works
- Trustworthy/Dominant perception (Part 2) in which you will be judging how trustworthy- or dominant the presented sounds are
The Magic Study can be conducted in two separate 2-hour sessions or as a single 4-hour session with a break in-between (please budget five hours in total). If you are interested, please click on the following link https://caasd-magic.youcanbook.me/ to book your session(s).
Speech/Song Study
Participants needed: people with an ASD diagnosis aged 9 and above
This study involves 3 tasks.
- Question perception (30 min)in which you will be judging which sound is more like a question compared to the other sound in a pair.
- Pitch perception (30 min)in which you will be judging which sound has a rising pitch contour compared to the other sound in a pair.
- Music perception (40 min)in which you will be judging which melody sounds more in tune compared to the other melody in a pair.
The speech/song study can be conducted in a single 2-hour session with breaks. If you are interested, please click on the following link https://speech-song.youcanbook.me/ to book a session.
Prediction in music and language
Participants needed: people with an ASD diagnosis aged 12 and above
This study involves 4 tasks, which will be conducted in the following order:
- Sentence completion task (15 min)in which you will produce one single word as to complete/continue a sentence.
- Music completion task (30 min) in which you will sing the following note that you think comes next.
- Sentence/music perceptual tasks (15-25 min)in which you will rate full sentences/melodies.
- Discrimination tasks (15-30 min)in which you will need to say if you think the tones/speech you heard sounded the same or different.
The Prediction study can be conducted in a single 2-hour session with breaks. If you are interested, please click on the following link https://aveic.youcanbook.me to book a session.