Perception and Production of Prosody by Speakers with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Focus-marking in a tonal language: Prosodic differences between Cantonese-speaking children with and without autism spectrum disorder

Abnormal speech prosody has been widely reported in individuals with autism. Many studies on children and adults with autism spectrum disorder speaking a non-tonal language showed deficits in using prosodic cues to mark focus. However, focus marking by autistic children speaking a tonal language is rarely examined. Cantonese-speaking children may face additional difficulties because tonal languages require them to use prosodic cues to achieve multiple functions simultaneously such as lexical contrasting and focus marking. This study bridges this research gap by acoustically evaluating the use of Cantonese speech prosody to mark information structure by Cantonese-speaking children with and without autism spectrum disorder. We designed speech production tasks to elicit natural broad and narrow focus production among these children in sentences with different tone combinations. Acoustic correlates of prosodic focus marking like f0, duration and intensity of each syllable were analyzed to examine the effect of participant group, focus condition and lexical tones. Our results showed differences in focus marking patterns between Cantonese-speaking children with and without autism spectrum disorder. The autistic children not only showed insufficient on-focus expansion in terms of f0 range and duration when marking focus, but also produced less distinctive tone shapes in general. There was no evidence that the prosodic complexity (i.e. sentences with single tones or combinations of tones) significantly affected focus marking in these autistic children and their typically-developing (TD) peers.

Perception and adaptation of receptive prosody in autistic adolescents

A fundamental aspect of language processing is inferring others' minds from subtle variations in speech. The same word or sentence can often convey different meanings depending on its tempo, timing, and intonation-features often referred to as prosody. Although autistic children and adults are known to experience difficulty in making such inferences, the science remains unclear as to why. We hypothesize that detail-oriented perception in autism may interfere with the inference process if it lacks the adaptivity required to cope with the variability ubiquitous in human speech. Using a novel prosodic continuum that shifts the sentence meaning gradiently from a statement (e.g., "It's raining") to a question (e.g., "It's raining?"), we have investigated the perception and adaptation of receptive prosody in autistic adolescents and two groups of non-autistic controls. Autistic adolescents showed attenuated adaptivity in categorizing prosody, whereas they were equivalent to controls in terms of discrimination accuracy. Combined with recent findings in segmental (e.g., phoneme) recognition, the current results provide the basis for an emerging research framework for attenuated flexibility and reduced influence of contextual feedback as a possible source of deficits that hinder linguistic and social communication in autism.

Bilingual exposure might enhance L1 development in Cantonese-English bilingual autistic children: Evidence from the production of focus

LAY ABSTRACT

It is commonly believed among professionals and parents that exposure to two languages imposes an additional burden on children with autism spectrum disorder. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence to support or reject this belief. With the prevalence of autism and an increasing number of children growing up bilingual, it is urgent to understand how bilingual exposure interacts with autism. Bilingual autistic children from Hong Kong, with Cantonese as their first language and English as their second language, took part in the study. We used a production game to test how bilingual autistic children use different levels of linguistic knowledge to produce contrastive information in real conversations, compared to their monolingual autistic peers and typically developing children matched in language abilities, nonverbal IQ, working memory and maternal education. We found that bilingual autistic children performed as good as typically developing children in general, and they even performed better than monolingual autistic children. Our findings suggest a bilingual advantage in autistic children in conveying constative information in sentences. We thus encourage parents to engage their children in rich bilingual environments. Clinicians, educators and other professionals may also consider adding bilingual aspects in training programmes to support families raising bilingual autistic children.

Filled Pauses Produced by Autistic Adults Differ in Prosodic Realisation, but not Rate or Lexical Type

We examined the use of filled pauses in conversations between homogeneous pairs of autistic and non-autistic adults. A corpus of semi-spontaneous speech was used to analyse the rate, lexical type (nasal "uhm" or non-nasal "uh"), and prosodic realisation (rising, level or falling) of filled pauses. We used Bayesian modelling for statistical analysis. We found an identical rate of filled pauses and an equivalent preference of "uhm" over "uh" across groups, but also a robust group-level difference regarding the intonational realisation of filled pauses: non-autistic controls produced a considerably higher proportion of filled pause tokens realised with the canonical level pitch contour than autistic speakers. Despite the fact that filled pauses are a frequent and impactful part of speech, previous work on their conversational use in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is limited. Our account is the first to analyse the intonational realisation of filled pauses in ASD and the first to investigate conversations between autistic adults in this context. Our results on rate and lexical type can help to contextualise previous research, while the novel findings on intonational realisation set the stage for future investigations.

Development and validation of a parental report of toddlers' prosodic skills

This study describes the development and validation of Proso-Quest, a parental report of toddlers' prosodic skills that aims to assess early prosodic development in European Portuguese. The development and validation of Proso-Quest proceeded in three phases. Phase 1 was undertaken (a) to establish the structure of the parental report and select the items considering previous work, (b) to collect input from experts on prosodic development, and (c) to revise the report after a pilot study. Phase 2 examined internal consistency, reliability, test-retest reliability, and correlations between Proso-Quest and a valid measure of vocabulary development. Finally, Phase 3 evaluated the discriminant validity of this report in a clinical sample that frequently presents prosodic impairments. The psychometric properties of Proso-Quest indicated an excellent internal consistency, high test-retest reliability, significant correlations with a valid measure of vocabulary development, and sensitivity to identify prosodic delays. This parental report showed evidence of reliability and validity in describing early prosodic development and impairment, and it may be a useful tool in research and educational assessments, as well as in clinical-based assessments.

Predicting Social Competence in Autistic and Non-Autistic Children: Effects of Prosody and the Amount of Speech Input

PURPOSE

Autistic individuals often face challenges perceiving and expressing emotions, potentially stemming from differences in speech prosody. Here we explore how autism diagnoses between groups, and measures of social competence within groups may be related to, first, children's speech characteristics (both prosodic features and amount of spontaneous speech), and second, to these two factors in mothers' speech to their children.

METHODS

Autistic (n = 21) and non-autistic (n = 18) children, aged 7-12 years, participated in a Lego-building task with their mothers, while conversational speech was recorded. Mean F0, pitch range, pitch variability, and amount of spontaneous speech were calculated for each child and their mother.

RESULTS

The results indicated no differences in speech characteristics across autistic and non-autistic children, or across their mothers, suggesting that conversational context may have large effects on whether differences between autistic and non-autistic populations are found. However, variability in social competence within the group of non-autistic children (but not within autistic children) was predictive of children's mean F0, pitch range and pitch variability. The amount of spontaneous speech produced by mothers (but not their prosody) predicted their autistic children's social competence, which may suggest a heightened impact of scaffolding for mothers of autistic children.

CONCLUSION

Together, results suggest complex interactions between context, social competence, and adaptive parenting strategies in driving prosodic differences in children's speech.

Can Natural Speech Prosody Distinguish Autism Spectrum Disorders? A Meta-Analysis

Natural speech plays a pivotal role in communication and interactions between human beings. The prosody of natural speech, due to its high ecological validity and sensitivity, has been acoustically analyzed and more recently utilized in machine learning to identify individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). In this meta-analysis, we evaluated the findings of empirical studies on acoustic analysis and machine learning techniques to provide statistically supporting evidence for adopting natural speech prosody for ASD detection. Using a random-effects model, the results observed moderate-to-large pooled effect sizes for pitch-related parameters in distinguishing individuals with ASD from their typically developing (TD) counterparts. Specifically, the standardized mean difference (SMD) values for pitch mean, pitch range, pitch standard deviation, and pitch variability were 0.3528, 0.6744, 0.5735, and 0.5137, respectively. However, the differences between the two groups in temporal features could be unreliable, as the SMD values for duration and speech rate were only 0.0738 and -0.0547. Moderator analysis indicated task types were unlikely to influence the final results, whereas age groups showed a moderating role in pooling pitch range differences. Furthermore, promising accuracy rates on ASD identification were shown in our analysis of multivariate machine learning studies, indicating averaged sensitivity and specificity of 75.51% and 80.31%, respectively. In conclusion, these findings shed light on the efficacy of natural prosody in identifying ASD and offer insights for future investigations in this line of research.

Disentangling Language Disorder and Bilingualism in Children with Developmental Language Disorder and Autism Spectrum Disorder: Evidence from Writing

Twenty-eight Albanian-Greek bilingual children with Developmental Language Disorder and 28 children with Autism Spectrum Disorder but no language impairment, along with 28 typically-developing, age-, Performance IQ- and socioeconomic status-matched bilingual children were asked to produce two expository texts which were coded for spelling (phonological, grammatical, orthographic) errors, stress and punctuation use. The children's expressive vocabulary, current language use and home language history were also measured. The results show that the bilingual children with Developmental Language Disorder were particularly vulnerable to spelling errors, while their bilingual peers with Autism Spectrum Disorder were rather challenged by stress and punctuation. The evidence speaks in favor of distinct patterns of writing impairment across the bilingual children with Developmental Language Disorder and Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The link between the factuality of verb and the theory of mind ability of Mandarin-speaking children with high-functioning autism

BACKGROUND

Weak theory of mind (ToM) ability is a core deficit in children with autism. A growing body of work has found that there is a close relation between complement syntax and ToM in autistic children. However, researchers have not yet investigated whether other linguistic components may explain the difficulties in ToM reasoning in autistic children.

AIMS

To determine whether verb factuality (i.e., mental and action verbs) is related to ToM ability, as measured by a false belief understanding (FBU) task after controlling the effect of complement syntax for Mandarin-speaking autistic children.

METHODS & PROCEDURES

Participants were verbal autistic children, aged 4-7 years. Their IQ performance (verbal, performance and total IQ) and the comprehension of complement syntax were evaluated. A total of 38 children scoring over 9 points in complement syntax test and 90 points in the verbal IQ test were selected to complete verb factuality and FBU task. The χ2 tests and correlation analyses were carried out on two relations: (1) ToM ability and understanding of verb factuality; and (2) ToM ability and comprehension of complement syntax.

OUTCOMES & RESULTS

A total of 11 autistic children completed the action verb factuality task, while 14 completed the mental verb factuality task and 13 completed both tasks. Participants performed well on the verb factuality task, and their ToM performance appeared to be related to their linguistic ability, regardless of the type of verb (i.e., action or mental verb). However, complement syntax scores did not significantly predict the success of the FBU task for the autistic children.

CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS

The results of this study link weaker ToM ability with the understanding of verb factuality among autistic children aged 4-7 and provide new evidence for the view that the development of language facilitates improvement of ToM skills. The findings shed new light on how language affects or determines social interactions.

WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS

What is already known on the subject ToM ability is crucial for social interaction. It has been claimed that mental verb factuality (e.g., think, had thought) may play a role in the development of ToM reasoning in typically developing children, but whether there is a link between the mastery of verb factuality and ToM skills in autistic children is still unclear. What this study adds to existing knowledge Correlational analysis revealed links between verbal ToM measured by unexpected location task and factuality test of mental verbs as well as action verbs. More importantly, this study confirmed the extra role of verb factuality in explaining ToM ability after excluding the influence of the complement syntax. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? This study suggests that the factuality of verbs could serve as a tool for autistic children to infer the mental states of others. Thus, training on this linguistic structure could be taken into consideration when improving the social skills of autistic children.

Syntactic and affective prosody recognition: Schizophrenia vs. Autism spectrum disorders

Patients with a recent diagnosis of schizophrenia and individuals receiving a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder without accompanying intellectual impairment (ASD w/o intellectual impairment) during their adulthood share several clinical characteristics. Exploring under-investigated aspects of these two clinical conditions may shed light on their possible connection and facilitate differential diagnosis at very early stages. To this end, we explored the ability of 15 adults with a recent diagnosis of schizophrenia, 15 individuals diagnosed with ASD w/o intellectual impairment as adults, and 15 healthy adults to resolve sentence ambiguities with the use of syntactic prosody, and to decode happiness, anger, sadness, surprise, fear, and neutrality based on affective prosody. Results revealed intact perception of syntactic prosody in adults with schizophrenia, but impaired affective prosody recognition, which could be attributed, however, to emotion processing difficulties overall. On the other hand, individuals with ASD w/o intellectual impairment were impaired on prosody comprehension per se, as evidenced in the most challenging conditions, namely the subject-reading condition and the emotion of surprise. The differences in prosody comprehension ability between the two clinical conditions may serve as an indicator, among other signs, during the diagnostic evaluation.

Speech Reception in Young Children with Autism Is Selectively Indexed by a Neural Oscillation Coupling Anomaly

Communication difficulties are one of the core criteria in diagnosing autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and are often characterized by speech reception difficulties, whose biological underpinnings are not yet identified. This deficit could denote atypical neuronal ensemble activity, as reflected by neural oscillations. Atypical cross-frequency oscillation coupling, in particular, could disrupt the joint tracking and prediction of dynamic acoustic stimuli, a dual process that is essential for speech comprehension. Whether such oscillatory anomalies already exist in very young children with ASD, and with what specificity they relate to individual language reception capacity is unknown. We collected neural activity data using electroencephalography (EEG) in 64 very young children with and without ASD (mean age 3; 17 females, 47 males) while they were exposed to naturalistic-continuous speech. EEG power of frequency bands typically associated with phrase-level chunking (δ, 1-3 Hz), phonemic encoding (low-γ, 25-35 Hz), and top-down control (β, 12-20 Hz) were markedly reduced in ASD relative to typically developing (TD) children. Speech neural tracking by δ and θ (4-8 Hz) oscillations was also weaker in ASD compared with TD children. After controlling gaze-pattern differences, we found that the classical θ/γ coupling was replaced by an atypical β/γ coupling in children with ASD. This anomaly was the single most specific predictor of individual speech reception difficulties in ASD children. These findings suggest that early interventions (e.g., neurostimulation) targeting the disruption of β/γ coupling and the upregulation of θ/γ coupling could improve speech processing coordination in young children with ASD and help them engage in oral interactions.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Very young children already present marked alterations of neural oscillatory activity in response to natural speech at the time of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis. Hierarchical processing of phonemic-range and syllabic-range information (θ/γ coupling) is disrupted in ASD children. Abnormal bottom-up (low-γ) and top-down (low-β) coordination specifically predicts speech reception deficits in very young ASD children, and no other cognitive deficit.

Non-autistic persons modulate their speech rhythm while talking to autistic individuals

How non-autistic persons modulate their speech rhythm while talking to autistic (AUT) individuals remains unclear. We investigated two types of phonological characteristics: (1) the frequency power of each prosodic, syllabic, and phonetic rhythm and (2) the dynamic interaction among these rhythms using speech between AUT and neurotypical (NT) individuals. Eight adults diagnosed with AUT (all men; age range, 24-44 years) and eight age-matched non-autistic NT adults (three women, five men; age range, 23-45 years) participated in this study. Six NT and eight AUT respondents were asked by one of the two NT questioners (both men) to share their recent experiences on 12 topics. We included 87 samples of AUT-directed speech (from an NT questioner to an AUT respondent), 72 of NT-directed speech (from an NT questioner to an NT respondent), 74 of AUT speech (from an AUT respondent to an NT questioner), and 55 of NT speech (from an NT respondent to an NT questioner). We found similarities between AUT speech and AUT-directed speech, and between NT speech and NT-directed speech. Prosody and interactions between prosodic, syllabic, and phonetic rhythms were significantly weaker in AUT-directed and AUT speech than in NT-directed and NT speech, respectively. AUT speech showed weaker dynamic processing from higher to lower phonological bands (e.g. from prosody to syllable) than NT speech. Further, we found that the weaker the frequency power of prosody in NT and AUT respondents, the weaker the frequency power of prosody in NT questioners. This suggests that NT individuals spontaneously imitate speech rhythms of the NT and AUT interlocutor. Although the speech sample of questioners came from just two NT individuals, our findings may suggest the possibility that the phonological characteristics of a speaker influence those of the interlocutor.

Neural Processing of Speech Sounds in ASD and First-Degree Relatives

Efficient neural encoding of sound plays a critical role in speech and language, and when impaired, may have reverberating effects on communication skills. This study investigated disruptions to neural processing of temporal and spectral properties of speech in individuals with ASD and their parents and found evidence of inefficient temporal encoding of speech sounds in both groups. The ASD group further demonstrated less robust neural representation of spectral properties of speech sounds. Associations between neural processing of speech sounds and language-related abilities were evident in both groups. Parent-child associations were also detected in neural pitch processing. Together, results suggest that atypical neural processing of speech sounds is a heritable ingredient contributing to the ASD language phenotype.

Voice acoustics allow classifying autism spectrum disorder with high accuracy

Early identification of children on the autism spectrum is crucial for early intervention with long-term positive effects on symptoms and skills. The need for improved objective autism detection tools is emphasized by the poor diagnostic power in current tools. Here, we aim to evaluate the classification performance of acoustic features of the voice in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with respect to a heterogeneous control group (composed of neurotypical children, children with Developmental Language Disorder [DLD] and children with sensorineural hearing loss with Cochlear Implant [CI]). This retrospective diagnostic study was conducted at the Child Psychiatry Unit of Tours University Hospital (France). A total of 108 children, including 38 diagnosed with ASD (8.5 ± 0.25 years), 24 typically developing (TD; 8.2 ± 0.32 years) and 46 children with atypical development (DLD and CI; 7.9 ± 0.36 years) were enrolled in our studies. The acoustic properties of speech samples produced by children in the context of a nonword repetition task were measured. We used a Monte Carlo cross-validation with an ROC (Receiving Operator Characteristic) supervised k-Means clustering algorithm to develop a classification model that can differentially classify a child with an unknown disorder. We showed that voice acoustics classified autism diagnosis with an overall accuracy of 91% [CI95%, 90.40%-91.65%] against TD children, and of 85% [CI95%, 84.5%-86.6%] against an heterogenous group of non-autistic children. Accuracy reported here with multivariate analysis combined with Monte Carlo cross-validation is higher than in previous studies. Our findings demonstrate that easy-to-measure voice acoustic parameters could be used as a diagnostic aid tool, specific to ASD.

Aberrant Emotional Prosody Circuitry Predicts Social Communication Impairments in Children With Autism

BACKGROUND

Emotional prosody provides acoustical cues that reflect a communication partner's emotional state and is crucial for successful social interactions. Many children with autism have deficits in recognizing emotions from voices; however, the neural basis for these impairments is unknown. We examined brain circuit features underlying emotional prosody processing deficits and their relationship to clinical symptoms of autism.

METHODS

We used an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging task to measure neural activity and connectivity during processing of sad and happy emotional prosody and neutral speech in 22 children with autism and 21 matched control children (7-12 years old). We employed functional connectivity analyses to test competing theoretical accounts that attribute emotional prosody impairments to either sensory processing deficits in auditory cortex or theory of mind deficits instantiated in the temporoparietal junction (TPJ).

RESULTS

Children with autism showed specific behavioral impairments for recognizing emotions from voices. They also showed aberrant functional connectivity between voice-sensitive auditory cortex and the bilateral TPJ during emotional prosody processing. Neural activity in the bilateral TPJ during processing of both sad and happy emotional prosody stimuli was associated with social communication impairments in children with autism. In contrast, activity and decoding of emotional prosody in auditory cortex was comparable between autism and control groups and did not predict social communication impairments.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings support a social-cognitive deficit model of autism by identifying a role for TPJ dysfunction during emotional prosody processing. Our study underscores the importance of tuning in to vocal-emotional cues for building social connections in children with autism.

Language in autism: domains, profiles and co-occurring conditions

This article reviews the current knowledge state on pragmatic and structural language abilities in autism and their potential relation to extralinguistic abilities and autistic traits. The focus is on questions regarding autism language profiles with varying degrees of (selective) impairment and with respect to potential comorbidity of autism and language impairment: Is language impairment in autism the co-occurrence of two distinct conditions (comorbidity), a consequence of autism itself (no comorbidity), or one possible combination from a series of neurodevelopmental properties (dimensional approach)? As for language profiles in autism, three main groups are identified, namely, (i) verbal autistic individuals without structural language impairment, (ii) verbal autistic individuals with structural language impairment, and (iii) minimally verbal autistic individuals. However, this tripartite distinction hides enormous linguistic heterogeneity. Regarding the nature of language impairment in autism, there is currently no model of how language difficulties may interact with autism characteristics and with various extralinguistic cognitive abilities. Building such a model requires carefully designed explorations that address specific aspects of language and extralinguistic cognition. This should lead to a fundamental increase in our understanding of language impairment in autism, thereby paving the way for a substantial contribution to the question of how to best characterize neurodevelopmental disorders.

Comprehension of Prosodically and Syntactically Marked Focus in Cantonese-Speaking Children With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorder

This study investigated the comprehension of prosodically and syntactically marked focus by 5- to 8-year-old Cantonese-speaking children with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Children listened to question-answer dialogues while looking at pictures depicting the scenarios, and judged whether the answers were correct responses to the questions. The results showed that children with ASD exhibited typically developing (TD)-like performance in the use of syntactic cues to understand focus, although they were significantly slower than their TD peers. However, children with ASD had more difficulties than their TD peers in utilizing prosodic cues in focus comprehension. These findings suggest that the comprehension difficulties found in children with ASD are domain-selective, and children with ASD are sensitive to language-specific focus marking strategies.

Perception of Prosody in Hearing-Impaired Individuals and Users of Hearing Assistive Devices: An Overview of Recent Advances

PURPOSE

Prosody perception is an essential component of speech communication and social interaction through which both linguistic and emotional information are conveyed. Considering the importance of the auditory system in processing prosody-related acoustic features, the aim of this review article is to review the effects of hearing impairment on prosody perception in children and adults. It also assesses the performance of hearing assistive devices in restoring prosodic perception.

METHOD

Following a comprehensive online database search, two lines of inquiry were targeted. The first summarizes recent attempts toward determining the effects of hearing loss and interacting factors such as age and cognitive resources on prosody perception. The second analyzes studies reporting beneficial or detrimental impacts of hearing aids, cochlear implants, and bimodal stimulation on prosodic abilities in people with hearing loss.

RESULTS

The reviewed studies indicate that hearing-impaired individuals vary widely in perceiving affective and linguistic prosody, depending on factors such as hearing loss severity, chronological age, and cognitive status. In addition, most of the emerging information points to limitations of hearing assistive devices in processing and transmitting the acoustic features of prosody.

CONCLUSIONS

The existing literature is incomplete in several respects, including the lack of a consensus on how and to what extent hearing prostheses affect prosody perception, especially the linguistic function of prosody, and a gap in assessing prosody under challenging listening situations such as noise. This review article proposes directions that future research could follow to provide a better understanding of prosody processing in those with hearing impairment, which may help health care professionals and designers of assistive technology to develop innovative diagnostic and rehabilitation tools.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.21809772.

Emotion recognition in autism spectrum disorder across age groups: A cross-sectional investigation of various visual and auditory communicative domains

Previous research on emotion processing in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has predominantly focused on human faces and speech prosody, with little attention paid to other domains such as nonhuman faces and music. In addition, emotion processing in different domains was often examined in separate studies, making it challenging to evaluate whether emotion recognition difficulties in ASD generalize across domains and age cohorts. The present study investigated: (i) the recognition of basic emotions (angry, scared, happy, and sad) across four domains (human faces, face-like objects, speech prosody, and song) in 38 autistic and 38 neurotypical (NT) children, adolescents, and adults in a forced-choice labeling task, and (ii) the impact of pitch and visual processing profiles on this ability. Results showed similar recognition accuracy between the ASD and NT groups across age groups for all domains and emotion types, although processing speed was slower in the ASD compared to the NT group. Age-related differences were seen in both groups, which varied by emotion, domain, and performance index. Visual processing style was associated with facial emotion recognition speed and pitch perception ability with auditory emotion recognition in the NT group but not in the ASD group. These findings suggest that autistic individuals may employ different emotion processing strategies compared to NT individuals, and that emotion recognition difficulties as manifested by slower response times may result from a generalized, rather than a domain-specific underlying mechanism that governs emotion recognition processes across domains in ASD.

Receptive and expressive lexical stress in adolescents with autism

Purpose: Lexical stress abilities were investigated in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) compared to typically developing (TD) controls. We hypothesised that individuals with ASD would demonstrate atypical prosody on lexical and phrase stress tasks and are perceived by listeners as sounding unnatural.Method: A between-group study was conducted to investigate lexical stress abilities among adolescents (12-20 years) with ASD (n = 11) compared to TD controls (n = 11) matched for age and gender. Two tasks were administered to assess the ability to receptively and expressively distinguish nouns from verbs and a noun phrase from a compound noun. Receptive tasks required participants to select visual stimuli corresponding with the utterance they heard. Expressive tasks were rated using perceptual judgments of accuracy, perceptual and acoustic measurements of duration and perceptual ratings of "naturalness."Result: Individuals with ASD performed with significantly less accuracy on all prosody tasks, significantly longer duration of utterances, and were rated as sounding "unnatural" at a significantly higher rate than controls.Conclusion: This study provides converging evidence that supports atypical prosody is influenced by longer duration of utterances and less accurate lexical and phrase stress. The clinical implications of this study support early assessment and intervention of prosodic disorders in ASD.

The perception of intonational and emotional speech prosody produced with and without a face mask: an exploratory individual differences study

Face masks affect the transmission of speech and obscure facial cues. Here, we examine how this reduction in acoustic and facial information affects a listener's understanding of speech prosody. English sentence pairs that differed in their intonational (statement/question) and emotional (happy/sad) prosody were created. These pairs were recorded by a masked and unmasked speaker and manipulated to contain audio or not. This resulted in a continuum from typical unmasked speech with audio (easiest) to masked speech without audio (hardest). English listeners (N = 129) were tested on their discrimination of these statement/question and happy/sad pairs. We also collected six individual difference measures previously reported to affect various linguistic processes: Autism Spectrum Quotient, musical background, phonological short-term memory (digit span, 2-back), and congruence task (flanker, Simon) behavior. The results indicated that masked statement/question and happy/sad prosodies were harder to discriminate than unmasked prosodies. Masks can therefore make it more difficult to understand a speaker's intended intonation or emotion. Importantly, listeners differed considerably in their ability to understand prosody. When wearing a mask, speakers should try to speak clearer and louder, if possible, and make intentions and emotions explicit to the listener.

Reading Behaviors through Patterns of Finger-Tracking in Italian Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

The paper proposes an ecological and portable protocol for the large-scale collection of reading data in high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD) children based on recording the finger movements of a subject reading a text displayed on a tablet touchscreen. By capitalizing on recent evidence that movements of a finger that points to a scene or text during visual exploration or reading may approximate eye fixations, we focus on recognition of written content and function words, pace of reading, and accuracy in reading comprehension. The analysis showed significant differences between typically developing and ASD children, with the latter group exhibiting greater variation in levels of reading ability, slower developmental pace in reading speed, less accurate comprehension, greater dependency on word length and word frequency, less significant prediction-based processing, as well as a monotonous, steady reading pace with reduced attention to weak punctuation. Finger-tracking patterns provides evidence that ASD readers may fail to integrate single word processing into major syntactic structures and lends support to the hypothesis of an impaired use of contextual information to predict upcoming stimuli, suggesting that difficulties in perception may arise as difficulties in prediction.

Mental representations of speech and musical pitch contours reveal a diversity of profiles in autism spectrum disorder

LAY ABSTRACT

As a key auditory attribute of sounds, pitch is ubiquitous in our everyday listening experience involving language, music and environmental sounds. Given its critical role in auditory processing related to communication, numerous studies have investigated pitch processing in autism spectrum disorder. However, the findings have been mixed, reporting either enhanced, typical or impaired performance among autistic individuals. By investigating top-down comparisons of internal mental representations of pitch contours in speech and music, this study shows for the first time that, while autistic individuals exhibit diverse profiles of pitch processing compared to non-autistic individuals, their mental representations of pitch contours are typical across domains. These findings suggest that pitch-processing mechanisms are shared across domains in autism spectrum disorder and provide theoretical implications for using music to improve speech for those autistic individuals who have language problems.

Cross-linguistic patterns of speech prosodic differences in autism: A machine learning study

Differences in speech prosody are a widely observed feature of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, it is unclear how prosodic differences in ASD manifest across different languages that demonstrate cross-linguistic variability in prosody. Using a supervised machine-learning analytic approach, we examined acoustic features relevant to rhythmic and intonational aspects of prosody derived from narrative samples elicited in English and Cantonese, two typologically and prosodically distinct languages. Our models revealed successful classification of ASD diagnosis using rhythm-relative features within and across both languages. Classification with intonation-relevant features was significant for English but not Cantonese. Results highlight differences in rhythm as a key prosodic feature impacted in ASD, and also demonstrate important variability in other prosodic properties that appear to be modulated by language-specific differences, such as intonation.

Virtual Reality Technology as an Educational and Intervention Tool for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Current Perspectives and Future Directions

The worldwide rising trend of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) calls for innovative and efficacious techniques for assessment and treatment. Virtual reality (VR) technology gains theoretical support from rehabilitation and pedagogical theories and offers a variety of capabilities in educational and interventional contexts with affordable products. VR is attracting increasing attention in the medical and healthcare industry, as it provides fully interactive three-dimensional simulations of real-world settings and social situations, which are particularly suitable for cognitive and performance training, including social and interaction skills. This review article offers a summary of current perspectives and evidence-based VR applications for children with ASD, with a primary focus on social communication, including social functioning, emotion recognition, and speech and language. Technology- and design-related limitations, as well as disputes over the application of VR to autism research and therapy, are discussed, and future directions of this emerging field are highlighted with regards to application expansion and improvement, technology enhancement, linguistic diversity, and the development of theoretical models and brain-based research.

Classifying Autism From Crowdsourced Semistructured Speech Recordings: Machine Learning Model Comparison Study

BACKGROUND

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that results in altered behavior, social development, and communication patterns. In recent years, autism prevalence has tripled, with 1 in 44 children now affected. Given that traditional diagnosis is a lengthy, labor-intensive process that requires the work of trained physicians, significant attention has been given to developing systems that automatically detect autism. We work toward this goal by analyzing audio data, as prosody abnormalities are a signal of autism, with affected children displaying speech idiosyncrasies such as echolalia, monotonous intonation, atypical pitch, and irregular linguistic stress patterns.

OBJECTIVE

We aimed to test the ability for machine learning approaches to aid in detection of autism in self-recorded speech audio captured from children with ASD and neurotypical (NT) children in their home environments.

METHODS

We considered three methods to detect autism in child speech: (1) random forests trained on extracted audio features (including Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients); (2) convolutional neural networks trained on spectrograms; and (3) fine-tuned wav2vec 2.0-a state-of-the-art transformer-based speech recognition model. We trained our classifiers on our novel data set of cellphone-recorded child speech audio curated from the Guess What? mobile game, an app designed to crowdsource videos of children with ASD and NT children in a natural home environment.

RESULTS

The random forest classifier achieved 70% accuracy, the fine-tuned wav2vec 2.0 model achieved 77% accuracy, and the convolutional neural network achieved 79% accuracy when classifying children's audio as either ASD or NT. We used 5-fold cross-validation to evaluate model performance.

CONCLUSIONS

Our models were able to predict autism status when trained on a varied selection of home audio clips with inconsistent recording qualities, which may be more representative of real-world conditions. The results demonstrate that machine learning methods offer promise in detecting autism automatically from speech without specialized equipment.

How do autistic adults use syntactic and prosodic cues to manage spoken discourse?

Discourse studies investigating differences in the socio-communicative profiles of autistic (ASD) and neurotypical (NT) individuals have mostly relied on orthographic transcriptions, without taking prosodic information into account. However, atypical prosody is ubiquitous in ASD and a more accurate representation of their discourse abilities should also include prosodic cues. This exploratory study addresses this gap by segmenting the spoken discourse of 12 ASD and NT adults using the framework of Basic Discourse Units (BDUs). BDUs result from the mapping of syntactic boundaries on prosodic units, which can coincide in different ways and are associated with different discourse strategies. We hypothesized that the discourse of ASD adults would display more atypical strategies than NT adults, reflecting a 'pedantic' style and more difficulties in managing ongoing discourse. While ASD adults did not produce more discourse units associated with didactic or pedantic strategies than NT adults, they did produce less units associated with strategies of interactional regulation. This study provides initial evidence that multidimensional linguistic units, such as BDUs can help differentiate speech delivery strategies of ASD adults from those of their NT peers, even based on simple prosodic cues like silent pauses.

Assessment and Treatment of Prosody Behavior in Individuals with Level 1 Autism: A Review and Call for Research

Differences in prosody behavior between individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their typically developing peers have been considered a central feature of ASD since the earliest clinical descriptions of the disorder (e.g., Kanner, 1943/1973). Prosody includes pitch and volume among other dimensions of vocal-verbal behavior that discriminate responses of the listener; thus, people with ASD whose prosody has confusing or off-putting effects may have fewer social opportunities at work, at school, or in the community. The purpose of this review is to examine the state of the literature intervening on prosody with individuals with ASD and to provide recommendations for researchers who are interested in contributing to the scientific understanding of prosody.

Rhythm and timing as vulnerabilities in neurodevelopmental disorders

Millions of children are impacted by neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), which unfold early in life, have varying genetic etiologies and can involve a variety of specific or generalized impairments in social, cognitive and motor functioning requiring potentially lifelong specialized supports. While specific disorders vary in their domain of primary deficit (e.g. autism spectrum disorder (social), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (attention), developmental coordination disorder (motor) and developmental language disorder (language)), comorbidities between NDDs are common. Intriguingly, many NDDs are associated with difficulties in skills related to rhythm, timing and synchrony though specific profiles of rhythm/timing impairments vary across disorders. Impairments in rhythm/timing may instantiate vulnerabilities for a variety of NDDs and may contribute to both the primary symptoms of each disorder as well as the high levels of comorbidities across disorders. Drawing upon genetic, neural, behavioural and interpersonal constructs across disorders, we consider how disrupted rhythm and timing skills early in life may contribute to atypical developmental cascades that involve overlapping symptoms within the context of a disorder's primary deficits. Consideration of the developmental context, as well as common and unique aspects of the phenotypes of different NDDs, will inform experimental designs to test this hypothesis including via potential mechanistic intervention approaches. This article is part of the theme issue 'Synchrony and rhythm interaction: from the brain to behavioural ecology'.

The Multidimensional Battery of Prosody Perception (MBOPP)

Prosody can be defined as the rhythm and intonation patterns spanning words, phrases and sentences. Accurate perception of prosody is an important component of many aspects of language processing, such as parsing grammatical structures, recognizing words, and determining where emphasis may be placed. Prosody perception is important for language acquisition and can be impaired in language-related developmental disorders. However, existing assessments of prosodic perception suffer from some shortcomings.  These include being unsuitable for use with typically developing adults due to ceiling effects and failing to allow the investigator to distinguish the unique contributions of individual acoustic features such as pitch and temporal cues. Here we present the Multi-Dimensional Battery of Prosody Perception (MBOPP), a novel tool for the assessment of prosody perception. It consists of two subtests: Linguistic Focus, which measures the ability to hear emphasis or sentential stress, and Phrase Boundaries, which measures the ability to hear where in a compound sentence one phrase ends, and another begins. Perception of individual acoustic dimensions (Pitch and Duration) can be examined separately, and test difficulty can be precisely calibrated by the experimenter because stimuli were created using a continuous voice morph space. We present validation analyses from a sample of 59 individuals and discuss how the battery might be deployed to examine perception of prosody in various populations.

The Multidimensional Battery of Prosody Perception (MBOPP)

Prosody can be defined as the rhythm and intonation patterns spanning words, phrases and sentences. Accurate perception of prosody is an important component of many aspects of language processing, such as parsing grammatical structures, recognizing words, and determining where emphasis may be placed. Prosody perception is important for language acquisition and can be impaired in language-related developmental disorders. However, existing assessments of prosodic perception suffer from some shortcomings.  These include being unsuitable for use with typically developing adults due to ceiling effects and failing to allow the investigator to distinguish the unique contributions of individual acoustic features such as pitch and temporal cues. Here we present the Multi-Dimensional Battery of Prosody Perception (MBOPP), a novel tool for the assessment of prosody perception. It consists of two subtests: Linguistic Focus, which measures the ability to hear emphasis or sentential stress, and Phrase Boundaries, which measures the ability to hear where in a compound sentence one phrase ends, and another begins. Perception of individual acoustic dimensions (Pitch and Duration) can be examined separately, and test difficulty can be precisely calibrated by the experimenter because stimuli were created using a continuous voice morph space. We present validation analyses from a sample of 59 individuals and discuss how the battery might be deployed to examine perception of prosody in various populations.

The Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Oral Sensory Challenges in Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder

OBJECTIVES

The purpose of the systematic review was to provide a summary and evaluation of oral sensory challenges in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

MATERIALS AND METHODS

The review evaluated 19 studies that met the inclusion and search criteria. The review is registered in Prospero Database (CRD42020179852). The 14 studies (8 case-control, 4 cohort, 1 observational, and 1 randomized clinical trial) were related to speech disorders and five studies (case-control studies) were associated with feeding and eating behavior in ASD. The meta-analysis of speech and feeding behavior was analyzed by using risk ratios (RRs) and standardized mean difference (SMD), with 95% confidence interval (CI).

RESULTS

The meta-analysis found a statistically significant difference of speech disorder between children and adolescents of ASD when compared with typically developed or other neurotypical children of similar age [0.4891 (95% CI = -2.4580; 1.4799), fixed effect; -0.1726 (95% CI = -14.2925; 7.5697), random effect]. Feeding and eating behavior reported a statistically significant difference between ASD children and adolescents with similar age group of typically developed controls [0.0433 (95% CI = -0.3531; 0.4398), fixed-effect; 0.3711 (95% CI = -3.0751; 3.8172), random effect].

CONCLUSION

The speech errors and feeding behavior were more consistent in ASD than in typically developed controls. The oral sensory challenges such as speech disorder and feeding behavior were more prevalent in ASD children and adolescents than in typically developed children and adolescents of the same age group. There was a significant lack in oral sensory-motor synchronization, incomplete motor planning, and poor oral neuromuscular coordination.

Perception and Production of Statement-Question Intonation in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Developmental Investigation

Prosody or “melody in speech” in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is often perceived as atypical. This study examined perception and production of statements and questions in 84 children, adolescents and adults with and without ASD, as well as participants’ pitch direction discrimination thresholds. The results suggested that the abilities to discriminate (in both speech and music conditions), identify, and imitate statement-question intonation were intact in individuals with ASD across age cohorts. Sensitivity to pitch direction predicted performance on intonation processing in both groups, who also exhibited similar developmental changes. These findings provide evidence for shared mechanisms in pitch processing between speech and music, as well as associations between low- and high-level pitch processing and between perception and production of pitch.

The Digital Divide in Technologies for Autism: Feasibility Considerations for Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Digital technologies have the potential to empower individuals with autism and their families. The COVID-19 pandemic emphasized and accelerated the drive towards technology for information, communication, training, clinical care and research, also in the autism community. However, 95% of individuals with autism live in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) where access to electricity, internet and the ever-increasing range of digital devices may be highly limited. The World Bank coined the term ‘the digital divide’ to describe the disparities in access to digital technologies between high-income and LMIC contexts. Here we evaluated the feasibility of six emerging technologies for autism spectrum disorders, and reflected on key considerations for implementation in LMIC contexts to ensure that we do not inadvertently widen the pre-existing digital divide.

Linguistic Tone and Non-Linguistic Pitch Imitation in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Cross-Linguistic Investigation

The conclusions on prosodic pitch features in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have primarily been derived from studies in non-tonal language speakers. This cross-linguistic study evaluated the performance of imitating Cantonese lexical tones and their non-linguistic (nonspeech) counterparts by Cantonese- and Mandarin-speaking children with and without ASD. Acoustic analyses showed that, compared with typically developing peers, children with ASD exhibited increased pitch variations when imitating lexical tones, while performed similarly when imitating the nonspeech counterparts. Furthermore, Mandarin-speaking children with ASD failed to exploit the phonological knowledge of segments to improve the imitation accuracy of non-native lexical tones. These findings help clarify the speech-specific pitch processing atypicality and phonological processing deficit in tone-language-speaking children with ASD.

Improving Emotion Perception in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder with Computer-Based Training and Hearing Amplification

Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) experience challenges with social communication, often involving emotional elements of language. This may stem from underlying auditory processing difficulties, especially when incoming speech is nuanced or complex. This study explored the effects of auditory training on social perception abilities of children with ASD. The training combined use of a remote-microphone hearing system and computerized emotion perception training. At baseline, children with ASD had poorer social communication scores and delayed mismatch negativity (MMN) compared to typically developing children. Behavioral results, measured pre- and post-intervention, revealed increased social perception scores in children with ASD to the extent that they outperformed their typically developing peers post-intervention. Electrophysiology results revealed changes in neural responses to emotional speech stimuli. Post-intervention, mismatch responses of children with ASD more closely resembled their neurotypical peers, with shorter MMN latencies, a significantly heightened P2 wave, and greater differentiation of emotional stimuli, consistent with their improved behavioral results. This study sets the foundation for further investigation into connections between auditory processing difficulties and social perception and communication for individuals with ASD, and provides a promising indication that combining amplified hearing and computer-based targeted social perception training using emotional speech stimuli may have neuro-rehabilitative benefits.

Conversational correlates of rapid social judgments of children and adolescents with and without ASD

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by deficits in social communication, and even children with ASD with preserved language are often perceived as socially awkward. We ask if linguistic patterns are associated with social perceptions of speakers. Twenty-one adolescents with ASD participated in conversations with an adult; each conversation was then rated for the social dimensions of likability, outgoingness, social skilfulness, responsiveness, and fluency. Conversations were analysed for responses to questions, pauses, and acoustic variables. Wide intonation ranges and more pauses within children's own conversational turn were predictors of more positive social ratings while failure to respond to one's conversational partner, faster syllable rate, and smaller quantity of speech were negative predictors of social perceptions.

Assessing Pragmatic Language Skills in Adults with Major Depressive Disorder: An Exploratory Study

INTRODUCTION

There is increasing evidence that major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with significant pragmatic language impairments. However, there is a lack of studies that use standardized tools and simultaneously investigate all pragmatic language skills among MDD patients. The aim of this study was to propose a more thorough investigation of all pragmatic language skills in patients with MDD.

METHODS

Twenty adults (aged 22-65) with a DSM-5 diagnosis of MDD were assessed using BLED Santa Lucia (Batteria sul Linguaggio dell'Emisfero Destro Santa Lucia), a battery designed to evaluate pragmatic language skills (comprehension of inferences, of picture and written metaphors, of indirect requests, of humoristic expressions, and of prosody). The performance of the MDD participants on all BLED Santa Lucia subscales was compared to 20 healthy control subjects (aged 20-60) matched for gender, age, years of education, and employment status.

RESULTS

MDD patients performed poorer than controls in comprehension of inferences (p < 0.01), picture metaphors (p < 0.001), written metaphors (p < 0.001), indirect requests (p < 0.01), humoristic expression (p < 0.05), and prosody (p < 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS

All pragmatic language skills can be significantly impaired in MDD patients. A valid assessment of all pragmatic language skills can allow, for each patient, the definition of a specific profile of risk and protective factors before and during psychotherapy.

A meta-analysis of prosody in autism, Williams syndrome, and Down syndrome

Prosody, the rhythm and melody of speech, is an important component of effective communication, and it is an area of difficulty for many populations who struggle with communication. This paper is a meta-analysis of nine studies (and two sets of unpublished data) that assessed prosody using the Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (PEPS-C; Peppé & McCann, 2003) in autism spectrum disorder, Williams syndrome, and Down syndrome. Our original goal was to include studies involving any neurodevelopmental disorder that is commonly associated with intellectual disability, yet our systematic search, which included three databases (i.e., PsychInfo, ERIC, and PubMed), only identified studies involving these three groups. To be included in the meta-analysis, studies had to include a group (n ≥ 3 participants) with a neurodevelopmental disorder commonly associated with intellectual disability and a typically developing comparison group matched on chronological age, nonverbal abilities, or verbal abilities. Studies also needed to report original data using the PEPS-C and be available in English. Study quality was assessed using a checklist adapted from Downes et al. (2016). Results revealed that prosodic form was a weakness for each etiology, while unique patterns of strengths and weaknesses were evident for prosodic functions. Groups with autism (n = 5), all classified as high-functioning or with Asperger's syndrome, exhibited weakness in emotional affect but some relative strengths with turn-end and focus tasks. Groups with Williams syndrome (n = 4) demonstrated weaknesses on phrase/sentence-level tasks and relative strengths on word-level tasks. Groups with Down syndrome (n = 2) had the greatest difficulty overall, though performance was better on receptive (vs. expressive) function tasks. By combining studies and related subtasks of the PEPS-C, we are able to more confidently generalize findings for each population and identify targets for intervention. However, given the limited number of studies identified, this paper also highlights the need for more research on prosody in intellectual disability.

Lifelong Tone Language Experience does not Eliminate Deficits in Neural Encoding of Pitch in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Atypical pitch processing is a feature of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), which affects non-tone language speakers' communication. Lifelong auditory experience has been demonstrated to modify genetically-predisposed risks for pitch processing. We examined individuals with ASD to test the hypothesis that lifelong auditory experience in tone language may eliminate impaired pitch processing in ASD. We examined children's and adults' Frequency-following Response (FFR), a neurophysiological component indexing early neural sensory encoding of pitch. Univariate and machine-learning-based analytics suggest less robust pitch encoding and diminished pitch distinctions in the FFR from individuals with ASD. Contrary to our hypothesis, results point to a linguistic pitch encoding impairment associated with ASD that may not be eliminated even by lifelong sensory experience.

Emotional prosody recognition in children with high-functioning autism under the influence of emotional intensity: Based on the perspective of emotional dimension theory

This paper investigated the ability of Mandarin-speaking children with high-functioning autism (HFA) to recognize the four categories of emotional prosody, namely, happiness, anger, sadness and fear, in moderate- and high-intensity emotional conditions using auditory discrimination tasks. Thirty-four children with HFA between 5 and 7 years of age and 34 typically developing (TD) controls participated in this study. In moderate-intensity conditions, children with HFA scored lower than TD children in the recognition of the four categories of emotional prosody, indicating an overall impairment. With an increase in the intensity of emotion, children with HFA showed improved accuracy for anger, decreased accuracy for happiness, but no change in accuracy for either sadness or fear. An analysis of error patterns demonstrated that unlike TD children, children with HFA were inclined to mistake happiness for anger, with the two categories differing in valence, and this inclination deepened as the intensity increased. In discriminating between sadness and fear, which have a slight arousal difference, both groups showed difficulty in moderate-intensity conditions. In high-intensity conditions, TD children were inclined to perceive stimuli as exhibiting fear, which demonstrates comparatively high arousal; thus, they were more accurate for fear, while HFA children were not sensitive to increases in arousal, showing no noticeable effect. These findings indicated that children with HFA have a mechanism distinct from that of TD children in emotional prosody recognition, exhibiting various degrees of impairment in this regard.

Temporal Coordination and Prosodic Structure in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Timing Across Speech and Non-speech Motor Domains

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often exhibit disordered speech prosody, but sources of disordered prosody remain poorly understood. We explored patterns of temporal alignment and prosodic grouping in a speech-based metronome repetition task as well as manual coordination in a drum tapping task among Cantonese speakers with ASD and normal nonverbal IQ and matched controls. Results indicate similar group results for prosodic grouping patterns, but significant differences in relative timing and longer syllable durations at phrase ends for the ASD group. Variability on the speech task was significantly correlated with variability on the drumming task, consistent with the view that impairment in both speech and non-speech motor domains can be linked with deficits in temporal processing.

Exploring the Relationship between Prosodic Control and Social Competence in Children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder characterized by persistent deficits in social communication and interaction. Speech is an important form of social communication. Prosody (e.g. vocal pitch, rhythm, etc.), one aspect of the speech signal, is crucial for ensuring information about the emotionality, excitability, and intent of the speaker, is accurately expressed. The objective of this study was to gain a better understanding of how auditory information is used to regulate speech prosody in autistic and non-autistic children, while exploring the relationship between the prosodic control of speech and social competence. Eighty autistic (M = 8.48 years, SD = 2.55) and non-autistic (M = 7.36 years, SD = 2.51) participants produced vocalizations while exposed to unaltered and frequency altered auditory feedback. The parent-report Multidimensional Social Competence Scale was used to assess social competence, while the Autism-Spectrum Quotient and the Autism Spectrum Rating Scales were used to assess autism characteristics. Results indicate that vocal response magnitudes and vocal variability were similar across autistic and non-autistic children. However, autistic children produced significantly faster responses to the auditory feedback manipulation. Hierarchical multiple regressions indicated that these faster responses were significantly associated with poorer parent-rated social competence and higher autism characteristics. These findings suggest that prosodic speech production differences are present in at least a subgroup of autistic children. These results represent a key step in understanding how atypicalities in the mechanisms supporting speech production may manifest in social-communication deficits, as well as broader social competence, and vice versa. Autism Res 2020, 13: 1880-1892. © 2020 International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals LLC LAY SUMMARY: In this study, autistic and non-autistic children produced vowel sounds while listening to themselves through headphones. When the children heard their vocal pitch shifted upward or downward, they compensated by shifting their vocal pitch in the opposite direction. Interestingly, autistic children were faster to correct for the perceived vowel sound changes than their typically developing peers. Faster responses in the children with ASD were linked to poorer ratings of their social abilities by their parent. These results suggest that autistic and non-autistic children show differences in how quickly they control their speech, and these differences may be related to the social challenges experienced by autistic children.

Prosodic Entrainment in Conversations of Verbal Children and Teens on the Autism Spectrum

Unusual speech prosody has long been recognized as a characteristic feature of the speech of individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). However, research to determine the exact nature of this difference in speech prosody is still ongoing. Many individuals with verbal autism perform well on tasks testing speech prosody. Nonetheless, their expressive prosody is judged to be unusual by others. We propose that one aspect of this perceived difference in speech prosody in individuals with ASD may be due to a deficit in the ability to entrain-or become more similar-to their conversation partners in prosodic features over the course of a conversation. In order to investigate this hypothesis, 24 children and teens between the ages of 9 and 15 years participated in our study. Twelve of the participants had previously been diagnosed with ASD and the other 12 participants were matched to the ASD participants in age, gender, and non-verbal IQ scores. All participants completed a goal-directed conversation task, which was subsequently analyzed acoustically. Our results suggest (1) that youth diagnosed with ASD entrain less to their conversation partners compared to their neurotypical peers-in fact, children and teens diagnosed with ASD tend to dis-entrain from their conversation partners while their neurotypical peers tend to converge to their conversation partners' prosodic features. (2) Although age interacts differently with prosodic entrainment in youth with and without ASD, this difference is attributable to the entrainment behavior of the conversation partners rather than to those with ASD. (3) Better language skill is negatively correlated with prosodic entrainment for both youth with and without ASD. The observed differences in prosodic entrainment in children and teens with ASD may not only contribute to the perceived unusual prosody in youth with ASD but are also likely to be indicative of their difficulties in social communication, which constitutes a core challenge for individuals with ASD.

Speech-language pathologists and prosody: Clinical practices and barriers

Prosodic impairments occur in many clinical populations, including those with autism and motor speech disorders. These impairments can negatively impact intelligibility, as well as an individual's ability to signal and understand linguistic contrasts and emotions. For this study, we surveyed 245 Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs) to assess their clinical practices with regards to prosody and to identify potential barriers to addressing prosody in the clinic. While a majority of respondents agreed that prosody was within their scope of practice, they reported that they rarely assessed or treated prosody when they suspected that a client had a prosodic impairment. Overall, respondents felt they were lacking in knowledge of the nature of prosody, experience with clients who have prosodic impairments, and knowledge of assessment and treatment methods for prosody. Recommendations include increasing training opportunities, encouraging collaboration between researchers and SLPs with expertise in prosody, and the development of a clinically feasible prosody assessment.

Phonological acquisition and development in Putonghua-speaking children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Poor phonological development adversely affects language development and interpersonal communication abilities in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). However, the characteristics of phonological development in children with ASD who speak Putonghua (the official standard spoken form of modern Mandarin Chinese) remain largely unknown. This study aims to investigate phonological acquisition and development among Putonghua-speaking children with ASD. Data were collected from participants recruited in Shanghai, China. Two experiments were conducted. In experiment I, phonological acquisition was compared between 16 children with ASD aged 3-6 years and 16 age-matched typically developing (TD) children. In experiment II, phonological acquisition was compared between 26 children with ASD over 6 years old and 26 receptive-language-age-matched TD children. Picture naming was applied to measure participants' phonology - the 21 initials, 36 finals and four tones of Putonghua. Paired-samples t-tests and Fisher's exact tests were applied. In experiment I, scores on initials, finals, tones and total phonology of children with ASD aged 3-6 years were significantly lower than those of age-matched TD children. The pronunciation accuracy rates for initials such as/x, t^h, l/, finals such as/jaʊ, joʊ, wo/ and Tone 3 (the low-rising tone) in the ASD group were significantly lower than in the TD group. In experiment II, there was no significant difference in overall phonological developmental level between children with ASD over 6 years old and receptive-language-age-matched TD children. Phonological development of Putonghua-speaking children with ASD was significantly lower than that of age-matched TD children but closer to that of receptive-language-age-matched TD children. Further, participants with ASD showed atypical development sequences in both initials and finals.

An Acoustic Characterization of Prosodic Differences in Autism Spectrum Disorder and First-Degree Relatives

This study examined prosody through characterization of acoustic properties of the speech of individuals with ASD and their parents, during narration. A subset of utterances were low-pass filtered and rated for differences in intonation, speech rate, and rhythm. Listener ratings were minimally related to acoustic measures, underscoring the complexity of atypical prosody in ASD. Acoustic analyses revealed greater utterance-final fundamental frequency excursion size and slower speech rate in the ASD group. Slower speech rate was also evident in the ASD parent group, particularly parents with the broad autism phenotype. Overlapping prosodic differences in ASD and ASD Parent groups suggest that prosodic differences may constitute an important phenotype contributing to ASD features and index genetic liability to ASD among first-degree relatives.

Lexical stress contrastivity in Italian children with autism spectrum disorders: an exploratory acoustic study

We investigated production of lexical stress in children with and without autism spectrum disorders (ASD), all monolingual Italian speakers. The mean age of the 16 autistic children was 5.73 years and the mean age of the 16 typically developing children was 4.65 years. Picture-naming targets were five trisyllabic words that began with a weak-strong pattern of lexical stress across the initial two syllables (WS: matita) and five trisyllabic words beginning with a strong-weak pattern (SW: gomito). Acoustic measures of the duration, fundamental frequency, and intensity of the first two vowels for correct word productions were used to calculate a normalised Pairwise Variability Index (PVI) for WS and SW words. Results of acoustic analyses indicated no statistically significant group differences in PVIs. Results should be interpreted in line with the exploratory nature of this study. We hope this study will encourage additional cross-linguistic studies of prosody in children's speech production.

Affective Prosody Perception and the Relation to Social Competence in Autistic and Typically Developing Children

Individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have difficulty perceiving and expressing emotions. Since prosodic changes in speech (i.e. changes in intonation, stress, rhythm, etc.) are crucial for extracting information about the emotional state of a speaker, an inability to perceive and interpret these prosodic changes may be related to impairments in social communication. This study used non-verbal emotional voice-clips to examine the ability of autistic and typically-developing children (7-13 years old) to extract affect from changes in prosody. This research also explored whether difficulty extracting affective intent from changes in prosody may be related to social competence. Autistic (n = 26) and typically-developing (n = 26) children accurately matched emotional voice-clips to emotion words, suggesting autistic children can accurately extract the affective meaning conveyed by changes in prosody. Autistic children were less accurate at matching the voice-clips to emotional faces, suggesting that autistic children may struggle to make use of prosodic information in a social context. Across both autistic and typically-developing children, prosody-face matching accuracy was found to predict overall social competence, as well as social inferencing abilities, suggesting that the inability to utilize affective information derived from a speaker's voice may interfere with effective social communication.