Researchers examined how intellectual ability relates to auditory multitalker speech perception in patients with clinically normal hearing, including 12 participants with autism, 10 with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, and 27 age- and sex-matched comparison participants. Using the Weschler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence – Second Edition and an adaptive Coordinate Response Measure task with three simultaneous sentences, researchers found a strong negative correlation between cognitive scores and the ability to identify a target talker in noise. Lower Full Scale IQ, verbal ability, and nonverbal ability were each associated with higher (poorer) target-to-masker thresholds, and this pattern persisted within each diagnostic group. 

Source: PLOS One