Abstract
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.
Highlights
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a genetically-based neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by core deficits in social communication and restricted interests or repetitive behaviors (American Psychiatric Association 2013)
Within the domain of social communication, prosody, which includes intonation modulation, rhythm, and rate, has been noted as a key area of impairment in ASD (Peppé et al 2006, 2007; Wells and Peppé 2003; Wells et al 2004)
A marginally significant group difference was detected for utterance-final F0 excursion size, with the ASD group exhibiting a larger change in F0 in the utterance-final position (ß =− .12, p =.05)
Summary
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a genetically-based neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by core deficits in social communication and restricted interests or repetitive behaviors (American Psychiatric Association 2013). Within the domain of social communication, prosody, which includes intonation modulation (changes in how ‘high’ or ‘low’ the voice sounds, based on rate of vocal fold vibration), rhythm (how evenly-timed syllables are in speech), and rate (how rapidly syllables are uttered in speech), has been noted as a key area of impairment in ASD (Peppé et al 2006, 2007; Wells and Peppé 2003; Wells et al 2004). It is important to note that prosody serves a variety of functions, all of which can impact communication. Subtle abnormalities in intonation and rhythm have been found to adversely impact listeners’ ability to perceive and process speech in the general population (Bent et al 2016)
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