The acoustic survey of intonation in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

The speech pattern of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrates a number of abnormal features, the study which can shed light on the difficulties the autistic children encounter in making meaning through speech. With regard to this stated purpose, in this article, I have scientifically examined the pattern of speech in a set of indicative and interrogative sentences as uttered by a group of autistic children and compared and contrasted the results with the pattern of speech in the same set of sentences as uttered by a group of typical development (TD) children. The specific aim of this study was to assess the intonation pattern, mean of pitch, amplitude, duration, intensity, and tilt in the ASD as compared to the TD. The data collected showed that while the amplitude in interrogative sentences, duration, intensity, mean of pitch, and tilt in ASD and TD were almost similar, the intonation pattern, the mean of pitch (with regard to severity of autism), and the amplitude in indicative sentences proved significantly different. To be more precise, with respect to these three latter features, the autistic children demonstrated monotony, an impairment that made them have difficulty making meaningful indicative and interrogative sentences.