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

Using Pivotal Response Treatment to Improve Language Functions of Autistic Children in Special Schools: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Language difficulties exert profound negative effects on the cognitive and social development of autistic children. Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT) is a promising intervention for improving social communication in autistic children, but there is a lack of a comprehensive examination of language functions. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of PRT in promoting the primary language functions (requesting, labeling, repeating, responding) defined by (Skinner, B. F. (1957). Verbal behavior. Martino Publishing.) theory of verbal behavior in autistic children. Thirty autistic children were randomly divided into the PRT group (Mage = 6.20, SDage = 1.21) and control group (Mage = 6.07, SDage = 1.49). The PRT group were provided with an 8-week training of the PRT motivation component in addition to treatment as usual (TAU) in their schools, whereas the control group only received TAU. Parents of the PRT group were also trained to practice the PRT motivation procedures at home. The PRT group demonstrated greater improvements in all four measured language functions compared to the control group. The improvement in language functions in the PRT group was generalized and maintained at the follow-up assessment. In addition, the PRT intervention enhanced untargeted social and communicative functioning, cognition, motor skills, imitation, and adaptive behaviors in the autistic children. In conclusion, language intervention using the motivation component of PRT is effective in promoting language functions as well as widespread untargeted cognitive and social functions in autistic children.

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.

Auditory Pitch Perception in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

PURPOSE

Pitch plays an important role in auditory perception of music and language. This study provides a systematic review with meta-analysis to investigate whether individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have enhanced pitch processing ability and to identify the potential factors associated with processing differences between ASD and neurotypicals.

METHOD

We conducted a systematic search through six major electronic databases focusing on the studies that used nonspeech stimuli to provide a qualitative and quantitative assessment across existing studies on pitch perception in autism. We identified potential participant- and methodology-related moderators and conducted metaregression analyses using mixed-effects models.

RESULTS

On the basis of 22 studies with a total of 464 participants with ASD, we obtained a small-to-medium positive effect size (g = 0.26) in support of enhanced pitch perception in ASD. Moreover, the mean age and nonverbal IQ of participants were found to significantly moderate the between-studies heterogeneity.

CONCLUSIONS

Our study provides the first meta-analysis on auditory pitch perception in ASD and demonstrates the existence of different developmental trajectories between autistic individuals and neurotypicals. In addition to age, nonverbal ability is found to be a significant contributor to the lower level/local processing bias in ASD. We highlight the need for further investigation of pitch perception in ASD under challenging listening conditions. Future neurophysiological and brain imaging studies with a longitudinal design are also needed to better understand the underlying neural mechanisms of atypical pitch processing in ASD and to help guide auditory-based interventions for improving language and social functioning.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.21614271.

Atypical prosodic realization by Mandarin-speaking autistic children: Evidence from tone sandhi and neutral tone

Introduction Atypical prosodic features have been widely reported in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), primarily in non-tonal language speakers. Nevertheless, the prosodic realizations in autistic people who speak tonal languages were relatively understudied. This study aimed to investigate the acoustic and phonetic patterns at the word-level speech in Mandarin-speaking autistic and typically developing (TD) children at different age ranges. Methods Thirty Mandarin-speaking autistic children (15 three- to five-year-olds and 15 six- to eight-year-olds) were recruited into the ASD group. The TD group consisted of 30 age- and gender-matched children. We employed a picture-naming task to elicit the spontaneous speech production of Mandarin disyllabic words in which tone change processes occur, namely Tone 3 (T3) sandhi and neutral tone (T0). Results The phonetic analysis showed that the ASD group generally could produce typical-like T3 sandhi and T0 in terms of pitch height. However, relative to the TD group, they exhibited flatter pitch contours during T3 sandhi production. Moreover, the acoustic pitch mean of citation tones in the ASD group was also significantly higher, accompanied by more rigid pitch curves in contour tones. In addition, the atypical temporal realization in the ASD group was manifested by the longer duration of T0 and the earlier inflection position of T3. Conclusions Mandarin-speaking autistic children under eight had the phonological ability to produce context-dependent tones based on connected tonal information at the word level. Nevertheless, their phonetic prosodic realization of tone change processes was atypical. Our findings provide evidence of atypical prosody in autistic children who speak tone languages. Clinically, these findings may be attributable to underlying neural differences in autistic children.

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.