It has been claimed that autism involves a cognitive style that processes perceptual stimulus with limited reference to the contextual information of the percept. In this study, we examined if this hypothesis applies to auditory speech perception, by testing whether the extent to which phonetic categorization shifts to make the percept a known word (i.e., the 'Ganong effect') is weakened as a function of autistic traits in a neurotypical population. Fifty-five university students were given the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) and a segment identification test using two word-to-nonword voice onset time (VOT) continua (kiss-giss and gift-kift). A significant negative correlation was found between the total AQ score and the identification shift that occurred between the continua. The AQ score did not correlate with scores on separately administered VOT discrimination, auditory lexical decision, or verbal IQ, thus ruling out enhanced auditory sensitivity, slower lexical access or verbal intelligence as explanations of the AQ-related shift in phonetic categorization.