Abstract
We re-evaluate conclusions about disfluency production in high-functioning forms of autism spectrum disorder (HFA). Previous studies examined individuals with HFA to address a theoretical question regarding speaker- and listener-oriented disfluencies. Individuals with HFA tend to be self-centric and have poor pragmatic language skills, and should be less likely to produce listener-oriented disfluency. However, previous studies did not account for individual differences variables that affect disfluency. We show that both matched and unmatched controls produce fewer repairs than individuals with HFA. For silent pauses, there was no difference between matched controls and HFA, but both groups produced more than unmatched controls. These results identify limitations in prior research and shed light on the relationship between autism spectrum disorders and disfluent speech.
Highlights
Individuals with high-functioning forms of autism spectrum disorders (HFA) tend to have a self-centric approach to dialogue and poor pragmatic skills.1 they often do not have language impairments per se but do have impairments in pragmatic aspects of language use, as well as atypical prosody
In much of the past research, the relationship between disfluency production and individual differences variables was negative, that is, lower-ability individuals produce more disfluencies (e.g. Engelhardt et al 2010). These negative relationships were found both in clinical populations (e.g. Shriberg et al 2001) and in typically-developing individuals (Engelhardt et al 2013). (The results from the HFA studies are summarized in Table 1, and the ADHD results are summarized in the supplementary material.) In the current study, we investigated differences in disfluency production between HFA and two groups of typically-developing controls
We found that individuals with HFA produced more repair disfluencies and that the tendency to produce repairs is likely speaker-oriented
Summary
Individuals with high-functioning forms of autism spectrum disorders (HFA) tend to have a self-centric approach to dialogue and poor pragmatic skills. they often do not have language impairments per se but do have impairments in pragmatic aspects of language use, as well as atypical prosody (for reviews see, McCann and Peppe 2003; Paul et al 2005; Tager-Flusberg et al 2005). Individuals with high-functioning forms of autism spectrum disorders (HFA) tend to have a self-centric approach to dialogue and poor pragmatic skills.. Individuals with high-functioning forms of autism spectrum disorders (HFA) tend to have a self-centric approach to dialogue and poor pragmatic skills.1 They often do not have language impairments per se but do have impairments in pragmatic aspects of language use, as well as atypical prosody (for reviews see, McCann and Peppe 2003; Paul et al 2005; Tager-Flusberg et al 2005). Returning to the issue of disfluency production in HFA, the key theoretical issue is to determine which types of disfluency are listener-oriented and which are speaker-oriented. In this case, a clinical population has been used to argue a basic
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