Prosody and its relationship to language in school‐aged children with high‐functioning autism

Abstract

Marion (2005) Prosody and its relationship to language in school-aged children with high-functioning autism. Accessed from:http://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/141/ Repository Use PolicyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties for personal research or study, educational or not-for-profit purposes providing that:• The full-text is not changed in any way • A full bibliographic reference is made • A hyperlink is given to the original metadata page in eResearch eResearch policies on access and re-use can be viewed on our This series consists of unpublished "working" papers. They are not final versions and may be superseded by publication in journal or book form, which should be cited in preference.All rights remain with the author(s) at this stage, and circulation of a work in progress in this series does not prejudice its later publication.Comments to authors are welcome. AbstractDisordered expressive prosody is a widely reported characteristic of the speech of individuals with autism. Despite this, it has received little attention in the research literature and the few studies that have addressed it have not described its relationship to other aspects of communication. This study investigated the prosody and language skills of 31 children with high functioning autism. The children completed a battery of speech, language and nonverbal assessments and a procedure for assessing receptive and expressive prosody.Language skills varied, but the majority of children had deficits in at least one aspect of language with expressive language most severely impaired. All of the children had difficulty with at least one aspect of prosody and prosodic ability correlated highly with expressive and receptive language.

Automatic Intonation Recognition for the Prosodic Assessment of Language-Impaired Children

“…However, SLI and TD children had very high recognition rates for the "Rising" intonation whereas both AD and PDD-NOS performed significantly worse. This result is coherent with studies that showed PDD children have more difficulties at imitating questions than statements [24] as well as short and long prosodic items [25], [27]. As pragmatic prosody was strongly conveyed by the "Rising" intonation due to the short questions, it is not surprising that such intonation recognition differences were found between SLI and the PDDs.…”

“…Paul et al [3] found no difference between AD and TD children in the use of intonation to distinguish questions and statements. Peppé and McCann [25] observed a tendency for AD subjects to utter a sentence that sounds like a question when a statement was appropriate. Le Normand et al [26] found that children with AD produced more words with flat contours than typically developing children.…”

Audio–vocal system regulation in children with autism spectrum disorders

“…Appropriate voice F 0 modulation is crucial for successful social interaction as it imparts information about the subject's state of mind, emotion, or intent. Thus, due to the abnormal prosody of speech in children with ASD, conversation with peers is often strained (Paul et al 2005b;McCann et al 2007). …”

Atypical Prosody in Asperger Syndrome: Perceptual and Acoustic Measurements

“…Additionally, it is known that children with ASD have at least some prosodic impairment and that the use of prosody to convey affect and phrase level stress are abilities harder to master (McCann, Peppé, Gibbon, O'Hare, & Rutherford, 2007). Despite previous studies, research has not yet provided a consistent characterization or typology of these prosodic disordered patterns and studies have not captured the extent of prosodic impairments in ASD.…”