Lexical and Affective Prosody in Children With High-Functioning Autism

Abstract

Purpose We investigated perception and production of lexical stress and processing of affective prosody in adolescents with high functioning autism (HFA). We hypothesized preserved processing of lexical and affective prosody, but atypical lexical prosody production. Method 16 children with HFA and 15 typically developing (TD) peers participated in three experiments: 1. Perception of affective prosody, 2. Lexical stress perception, 3. Lexical stress production. In Experiment 1, participants labeled sad, happy, and neutral spoken sentences that were low-pass filtered, to eliminate verbal content. In Experiment 2 participants disambiguated word meanings based on lexical stress (HOTdog, vs. hotDOG). In Experiment 3 participants produced these words in a sentence completion task. Productions were analyzed using acoustic measures. Results Accuracy levels showed no group differences. Participants with HFA could determine affect from filtered sentences and disambiguate words based on lexical stress. They produced appropriately differentiated lexical stress patterns but demonstrated atypically long productions indicating reduced ability in natural prosody production. Conclusions Children with HFA were as capable as their TD peers in receptive tasks of lexical stress and affective prosody. Prosody productions were atypically long, despite accurate differentiation of lexical stress patterns. Future research should use larger samples and spontaneous vs. elicited productions.

Expressive prosody in children with autism spectrum conditions

“…The implications for the study of children with ASC are that where aspects of language and communication are concerned, participants should be distinguished as to whether they have AS or an ASC with more severe language impairment, whereas many studies concerning communication in ASC show no differences on language measures between participants with ASC and TD controls (e.g. Diehl, Watson, Bennetto, McDonough, & Gunlogson, 2009;Grossman, Bemis, Plesa Skwerer, & Tager-Flusberg, 2010;Paul et al, 2005). Mean prosody scores of the AS group are higher than for the HFA group, and there is a wider gap between the HFA group and their TD peers than for the AS group.…”

Characteristics of the Understanding and Expression of Emotional Prosody among Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…Among children Mitsuhashi and Nakamura compared children with learning disabilities and high-functioning pervasive developmental disorders (HFPDD) and found that children with HFPDD experienced more difficulties in understanding others' emotions and intentions from speech intonation and often took words literally [27]. Other studies have found that children and adolescents with ASD show difficulties or differences with perceiving and imitating prosodic patterns (exaggerated or monotone, fast or slow) compared to typicallydeveloping controls [28][29][30].…”

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

“…Most of the studies in this area have focused primarily on the perception of pragmatic/affective prosody (Chevallier, Noveck, Happé, & Wilson, 2011;Globerson et al, 2014;Golan, Baron-Cohen, & Hill, 2006;Golan, Baron-Cohen, Hill, & Rutherford, 2007;Grossman, Bemis, Plesa Skwerer, & Tager-Flusberg, 2010;Heikkinen et al, 2010;Järvinen-Pasley, Wallace, Ramus, Happé, & Heaton, 2008b;Jones et al, 2011;Kleinman, Marciano, & Ault, 2001;Lindner & Rosén, 2006;Peppé, McCann, Gibbon, O'Hare & Rutherford, 2007;Rutherford, Baron-Cohen, & Wheelwright, 2002). Several of these studies using complex vocal expressions (i.e.…”

“…tasks that demand enhanced cognitive load), reported findings for atypical perception of pragmatic and affective prosodic cues in individuals with ASD (e.g., Chevallier et al, 2011;Golan et al, 2006Golan et al, , 2007Kleinman et al, 2001;Rutherford et al, 2002). In contrast, the processing of basic voice expressions and vocalizations (e.g., laughing-happy, crying-sad) appear to be intact in children, adolescents and adults with ASD (Grossman et al, 2010;Heikkinen et al, 2010;Jones et al, 2011), although some studies failed to replicate these findings (Lindner & Rosén, 2006;Mazefsky & Oswald, 2007;Philip et al, 2010).…”