Two experiments focus on Thai tone perception by native speakers of tone languages (Thai, Cantonese, and Mandarin), a pitch-accent (Swedish), and a nontonal (English) language. In Experiment 1, there was better auditory-only and auditory-visual discrimination by tone and pitch-accent language speakers than by nontone language speakers. Conversely and counterintuitively, there was better visual-only discrimination by nontone language speakers than tone and pitch-accent language speakers. Nevertheless, visual augmentation of auditory tone perception in noise was evident for all five language groups. In Experiment 2, involving discrimination in three fundamental frequency equivalent auditory contexts, tone and pitch-accent language participants showed equivalent discrimination for normal Thai speech, filtered speech, and violin sounds. In contrast, nontone language listeners had significantly better discrimination for violin sounds than filtered speech and in turn speech. Together the

Social and linguistic explanations have been proposed for pronoun reversals in young typically developing (TD) children and those with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The current study breaks new ground in investigating both explanations, comparing 18 TD toddlers and 15 children with ASD at similar language levels. Spontaneous speech was sampled every four months for six visits. Vocabulary and joint attention were also measured. Both groups produced pronoun reversals at low rates. The ASD group produced somewhat more reversals than the TD group, overall and at multiple visits. In the ASD group, early language and joint attention scores contributed significantly and independently to the incidence of reversal. Both linguistic and social factors seem implicated; moreover, reversals seem to occur when children’s language and social abilities develop asynchronously. These findings can help clinicians devise both linguistic and social interventions for the relevant children.

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