Do children with autism acquire the phonology of their peers? An examination of group identification through the window of bilingualism

Abstract

Normal children whose parents have different native languages tend to develop an accent which is closer to their peers than to either parent. It was predicted that children with autism, because of their social deficits, might not acquire the accent of their peers, perhaps because of the lack of the normal drive to identify with peers. Bilingualism was used as a window into such social factors in language acquisition. Using audiotaped speech samples, the study found that in a sample of children with autism who were brought up in England and whose mothers were not English, 83.3% acquired their mother's (non-English) accent. In contrast, among normally- developing siblings of children with autism who were brought up in England and whose mothers were not English, only 12.5% acquired their mother's (non-English) accent. We suggest that such studies of unusual populations are of value in furthering our understanding of the larger population of children with autism, and the influences on normal social development.

Receptive and Expressive Prosodic Ability in Children With High-Functioning Autism

“…"dull", "wooden", "singsong", "robotic", "stilted", "over precise" and "bizarre" (Baltaxe & Simmons, 1985;Fay & Schuler, 1980): terms which perhaps reflect perceived characteristics of autism more than acoustic features. The fact that adjectives as QMUC Speech Science Research Centre Working Paper WP-5 (2006) Series Editors: James M Scobbie, Ineke Mennen, Jocelynne Watson Peppé et al 3 opposed as "monotonous" and "exaggerated", "slow" and "fast" (Baron-Cohen & Staunton, 1994) can be used to describe this atypicality suggests a wide variation in either the perception of atypical expressive prosody or in the prosody itself. A characterisation of the acoustic features of atypical expressive prosody is lacking in the literature, and is beyond the scope of this paper.…”

Regional accent variation in the shadowing task: Evidence for a loose perception–action coupling in speech

“…For instance, children almost always take over the accent of their peer group and are remarkably flexible in this respect. Baron-Cohen and Staunton (1994) reported a case in which a 4.5-year-old boy, who moved from London to Dublin, changed from a Hackney to an Irish accent of English within just 2 months. But even in adulthood, accents are flexible.…”

Relations Among Detection of Syllable Stress, Speech Abnormalities, and Communicative Ability in Adults With Autism Spectrum Disorders

“…However, it is worth pointing out that perception of syllable stress was not associated with communicative ability in ASD, indicating that factors other than perceptive prosody sensitivities may contribute to the development of communication deficits. Previous studies show that children with ASD do not emulate the speech of their peers like typically developing children do (Baron-Cohen & Staunton, 1994;Paul et al, 2008). For example, their stress production ability is not qualitatively comparable to the level of their peers (Diehl & Paul, 2013;Paul et al, 2005a).…”

“…For example, their stress production ability is not qualitatively comparable to the level of their peers (Diehl & Paul, 2013;Paul et al, 2005a). This lack of speech emulation is thought to be an important contributing factor to the social communication deficits observed in speakers with ASD (Baron-Cohen & Staunton, 1994;Paul et al, 2008). Receptive prosody precedes and influences the development of expressive prosody.…”