Prosody in autism spectrum disorders: a critical review

McCann, Joanne; Peppé, Sue

doi:10.1080/1368282031000154204

Cited by 332 publications

(224 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…Pitch is used to convey intonational and pragmatic meanings at the utterance level rather than lexical meanings at the word level (Cruttenden, 1997;Wennerstrom, 2001). Taken to an extreme, speakers of intonation languages may communicate word meanings effectively with minimal or even inappropriate use of pitch contours, as seen, for example, in autism spectrum disorders (McCann & Peppé, 2003).…”

Section: Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Enhanced production and perception of musical pitch in tone language speakers

Pfordresher

Brown

2009

Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics

139

158

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Individuals differ markedly with respect to how well they can imitate pitch through singing and in their ability to perceive pitch differences. We explored whether the use of pitch in one's native language can account for some of the differences in these abilities. Results from two studies suggest that individuals whose native language is a tone language, in which pitch contributes to word meaning, are better able to imitate (through singing) and perceptually discriminate musical pitch. These findings support the view that language acquisition fine-tunes the processing of critical auditory dimensions in the speech signal and that this fine-tuning can be carried over into nonlinguistic domains.

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Section: Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Enhanced production and perception of musical pitch in tone language speakers

Pfordresher

Brown

2009

Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics

139

158

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“…Another possible hypothesis is that lack of hemispheric specialization may contribute to reduced abilities in right hemisphere-specialized tasks as well, which include processing the prosodic, emotional, and melodic aspects of language, and interpreting figurative meanings in language, humor, and metaphor (Toga and Thompson, 2003). Behavioral studies report deficits in these skills in autism (e.g., McCann and Peppe, 2003), which suggests that further study may be warranted in this area.…”

Section: Lateralization and Behavioral Impairment In Asdmentioning

confidence: 99%

Atypical functional lateralization of language in autism spectrum disorders

et al. 2008

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Impaired language is a prominent behavioral marker of autism spectrum disorders (ASD), but its neurobiological underpinnings are incompletely understood. We studied letter and category fluency in 14 high functioning ASD individuals and 14 age-matched controls. Each fluency condition was compared to self-paced repetition of the word "nothing." Responses were recorded to monitor performance. In letter fluency, the ASD group had significantly greater activation than controls in the right frontal and right superior temporal lobe. Between-group differences were not observed in left prefrontal cortex. By examining functional asymmetry in frontal cortex, we found that the ASD group had significantly reduced lateralization of activation patterns in letter fluency compared to the controls. In category fluency, no between-group differences in lateralization were found, in light of greater bilateral activation in controls. These findings indicate reduced hemispheric differentiation for certain verbal fluency tasks in ASD, consistent with some previous evidence of atypical functional and structural asymmetries in autism. Abnormal functional organization may contribute to the language impairment seen in ASD.

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“…This result suggests that typically developing children appear to consider the presence of intonation as a crucial feature that distinguishes human speech from robot speech. Children with ASD have been reported to produce atypical intonation, which has been variably described as sounding Brobotic,^Bmonotone,^Boverprecise,^or Bsing-song^( [18] and references therein), and have difficulties with using intonation appropriately in communication [40]. However, children with ASD may show strong pitch discrimination capacities in both speech and non-speech material [43] and can make use of intonational information to process syntactically ambiguous sentences [19].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of robots’ intonation and bodily appearance on robot-mediated communicative treatment outcomes for children with autism spectrum disorder

Straten

Smeekens

Barakova

et al. 2017

Pers Ubiquit Comput

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Previous research has suggested that robotmediated therapy is effective in the treatment of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), but not all robots seem equally appropriate for this purpose. We investigated in an exploratory study whether a robot's intonation (monotonous vs. normal) and bodily appearance (mechanical vs. humanized) influence the treatment outcomes of Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT) sessions for children with ASD. The children (age range 4-8 years) played puzzle games with a robot which required communication with the robot. The treatment outcomes were measured in terms of both task performance and affective states. We have found that intonation and bodily appearance have an effect on children's affective states but not on task performance. Specifically, humanized bodily appearance leads to more positive affective states in general and a higher degree of interest in the interaction than mechanical bodily appearance. Congruence between bodily appearance and intonation triggers a higher degree of happiness in children with ASD than incongruence between these two factors.

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Prosody in autism spectrum disorders: a critical review

Abstract: Research in this area has covered mostly prosodic expression, although some more recent studies cover comprehension, processing and the relationship of receptive prosodic ability to theory of mind. Findings conflict and methodology varies greatly.

Cited by 332 publications

References 50 publications

Enhanced production and perception of musical pitch in tone language speakers

Enhanced production and perception of musical pitch in tone language speakers

Atypical functional lateralization of language in autism spectrum disorders

Effects of robots’ intonation and bodily appearance on robot-mediated communicative treatment outcomes for children with autism spectrum disorder

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