Prosody In Speech-Communication Research Articles

A profile of prosodic speech differences in individuals with autism spectrum disorder and first-degree relatives.

Impairments in prosody (e.g., intonation, stress) are among the most notable communication characteristics of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and can significantly impact communicative interactions. Evidence suggests that differences in prosody may be evident among first-degree relatives of autistic individuals, indicating that genetic liability to ASD is expressed through prosodic variation, along with subclinical traits referred to as the broad autism phenotype (BAP). This study aimed to further characterize prosodic profiles associated with ASD and the BAP to better understand the clinical and etiologic significance of prosodic differences. Autistic individuals, their parents, and respective control groups completed the Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (PEPS-C), an assessment of receptive and expressive prosody. Responses to expressive subtests were further examined using acoustic analyses. Relationships between PEPS-C performance, acoustic measurements, and pragmatic language ability in conversation were assessed to understand how differences in prosody might contribute to broader ASD-related pragmatic profiles. In ASD, receptive prosody deficits were observed in contrastive stress. With regard to expressive prosody, both the ASD and ASD Parent groups exhibited reduced accuracy in imitation, lexical stress, and contrastive stress expression compared to respective control groups, though no acoustic differences were noted. In ASD and Control groups, lower accuracy across several PEPS-C subtests and acoustic measurements related to increased pragmatic language violations. In parents, acoustic measurements were tied to broader pragmatic language and personality traits of the BAP. Overlapping areas of expressive prosody differences were identified in ASD and parents, providing evidence that prosody is an important language-related ability that may be impacted by genetic risk of ASD.

Prosodic development from 4 to 10 years: Data from the Italian adaptation of the PEPS-C

• The development of prosodic functions covers a long period, till adolescence. • The PEPS-C evaluates the prosodic competence in both comprehension and expression. • The Italian version aimed to describe the developmental trajectories in this language. • The cross-linguistic comparison showed similarities and differences amongst languages. The development of prosody covers a long age period, with some functions not well-mastered till adolescence. Moreover, languages show different prosodic developmental trajectories, which can be related to their distinctive characteristics. The Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (PEPS-C) consists of a battery of tasks developed to analyse this competence in both comprehension and expression. It takes into account several prosodic functions (including both affective and linguistic functions). Easy to administer and to score, it has demonstrated its usefulness in the evaluation of prosodic competence from preschool age and in several languages. The main aim of the present work is to investigate the development of prosodic competence in a group of Italian children from four to ten years of age through the administration of the Italian version of the PEPS-C. The results confirm that prosodic development covers a long age period for Italian too: indeed, while the affective function of prosody seemed to be well-mastered from the preschool period, other functions, like use of the prosodic focus, are not well-mastered till late, after the age of ten years. The developmental trajectories found are discussed in relation to those found for languages other than Italian.

Prosodic skills of Spanish-speaking children with developmental language disorder.

Phonological difficulties in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) are well documented. However, abilities regarding prosody, the rhythmic and melodic characteristics of language, have been less widely studied, particularly in Spanish. Moreover, the scant research findings that have been reported are contradictory. These considerations justify our new research into the question, focusing on Spanish-speaking children with DLD. To examine a wide range of prosodic skills among Spanish-speaking children with DLD. To analyse the relationships between prosody and other language measurements. Prosodic skills were assessed through the Spanish version of the Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (PEPS-C) battery. The performance of 19 children aged 5-11 years with DLD was compared with that of a chronological age-matched control group of 19 typically developing children. Language skills were also assessed. There were significant differences between the group with DLD and the control group in terms of skills involving prosody functions and forms: turn-end and chunking signalling, contrastive focus and affect expression and understanding, discriminating and the imitation of prosodic patterns in both words and phrases. Spanish-speaking children with DLD present impairments not only when prosody interacts with language but also in the processing of prosody alone. The study results suggest that prosody is related to lexicon and grammar in children with DLD. The prosodic impairments of Spanish-speaking children with DLD could produce a negative impact on their language functioning and could also relate to their emotional and social difficulties. Consideration should therefore be given to focusing future interventions on prosodic skills in Spanish-speaking children with DLD. What is already known on the subject Although deficits in segmental phonology have been extensively studied in DLD, relatively little research has been conducted into supra-segmental phonology, especially among speakers of Spanish. To our knowledge, only one previous study has analysed the prosodic skills of Spanish-speaking children with DLD, and this only focused on prosody while reading. No analysis was made of the use of prosody in language comprehension and expression. What this study adds to existing knowledge This is the first study to analyse competence in a wide range of prosodic skills among Spanish-speaking children with DLD by using the PEPS-C battery. Spanish-speaking children with DLD present impairments in prosody functions and forms, which are related to other language skills. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? Prosodic impairments among Spanish-speaking children with DLD could contribute to explaining both their language difficulties and their socio-emotional problems. The results obtained suggest that Spanish-speaking children with DLD could benefit from interventions focused on prosody.

Irish English PEPS-C (2015 edition) and Learners of ESL

Introduction: Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (PEPS-C) is a computerised test for assessing the abilities to understand and use speech prosody in communication. It has been used to obtain a profile of strengths and weaknesses in different prosodic forms and functions for different clinical populations (e.g., autism spectrum disorders, Down syndrome) and second language learners. The 2015 edition of PEPS-C incorporates four new subtests addressing the understanding and production of lexical stress and phrasal stress, and collapses four form subtests (Intonation/Short-Item Input and Output, Prosody/Long-Item Input and Output) into two (Discrimination, Imitation). However, the suitability of these new tasks has not been reported in any published studies, although they are likely to be relevant for learners of English. Moreover, the present authors update the Irish English (IE) version of PEPS-C to the 2015 edition for another research project on prosodic skills in children with spina bifida. Hence, this paper reports the making of PEPS-C 2015 (IE) and examines the usefulness of this test in assessing a group of non-native speakers of English, as compared to a group of native speakers of IE. Methods: PEPS-C 2015 for Irish English was developed by adapting the test items of the UK English version of the test. The PEPS-C 2015 (IE) was then trialled on 25 native speakers of Irish English and 10 Spanish speakers who speak English as a second language (ESL). Results: All native speakers of Irish English showed competence (scored ≥75% correct) in the comprehension and expression of prosodic form and functions assessed. For the ESL speakers, the test identified two areas of possible difficulty for this group: Phrase Stress Comprehension and Expression, and Contrastive Stress Comprehension. Conclusion: The PEPS-C 2015, with its extra stress tasks, might therefore be useful as a prosody assessment tool for ESL speakers, particularly those with a Romance first language or at an early stage of learning, but further research is needed.

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.

The Speech Prosody Tests: A Narrative Review

Introduction: Speech prosody is one of the important communication components that describes the paraliguistic features of speech. The tests are suitable tools for quantifying speech and language skills, and of necessary needs for evaluation, screening, describing, diagnosis, and treatment of various aspects. The purpose of present study was to review existing tests in speech prosody recognition, as well as their subtests, implementation and scorings, and ultimately their application in clinical and research fields of children and adults. Materials and Methods: An electronic search for reviewing common speech prosody tests was performed in Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus, Medline, Scientific Information Database (SID), Google Scholar, Ovid, and Magiran databases to obtain relevant articles published from 1981 to 2019. The keywords used included “Prosody”, “Assessment”, “Test”, “Tool”, “Evaluation”, “Diagnosis”, “Instrument”, and “Measurement”. The articles obtained using the inclusion criteria were studied following as access to the full text of the article and the English or Persian language. From 15 articles found, 8 tests that were adhered to the inclusion criteria were selected for consideration. Results : 8 speech prosody tests were evaluated which included 5 perceptual tests, 2 expressive tests, and 1 perceptual expressive test. The oldest test was made in 1981, and the latest in 2012. Conclusion: The literature review shows that some tests have been used more often in recent years due to the specialized expertise of the subtests. A review of speech tests suggests that the Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (PEPS-C) test is more prestigious due to the assessment of perceptual and expression areas, standardization for normal and disabled children, translation into several languages, and high psychometric properties.

The feasibility and appropriateness of a peer-to-peer, play-based intervention for improving pragmatic language in children with autism spectrum disorder

Purpose: This study trialled a play-based, peer-to-peer intervention with children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to identify suitable instruments for measuring changes in pragmatic language following the intervention, and evaluate preliminary effectiveness. It also aimed to investigate the appropriateness of the intervention for participants.Method: Ten children with ASD, their typically developing peers, and parents participated. The Pragmatics Observational Measure (POM), Social Emotional Evaluation (SEE) and Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech Communication (PEPS-C) measured the participant’s social communication skills before, after, and 2-months following the intervention. Parent interviews were conducted two months after the intervention and responses were analysed using a thematic approach.Result: Children demonstrated gains in pragmatic language on the POM (χ2(3) = 11.160, p = 0.011) and related higher-level language on the SEE (χ2(2) = 6.686, p = 0.035). The PEPS-C did not produce any significant results. Parent interview responses indicated the intervention was appropriate for the children and families involved.Conclusion: The intervention warrants further investigation of effectiveness with a more robust research design. Consideration should be given to using observational measures of pragmatic language away from the clinic environment to evaluate generalisation, and future development of the intervention might consider variations in playmates and group size.

Executive Functions and Prosodic Abilities in Children With High-Functioning Autism.

Little is known about the relationship between prosodic abilities and executive function skills. As deficits in executive functions (EFs) and prosodic impairments are characteristics of autism, we examined how EFs are related to prosodic performance in children with high-functioning autism (HFA). Fifteen children with HFA (M = 7.4 years; SD = 1.12), matched to 15 typically developing peers on age, gender, and non-verbal intelligence participated in the study. The Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (PEPS-C) was used to assess prosodic performance. The Children’s Color Trails Test (CCTT-1, CCTT-2, and CCTT Interference Index) was used as an indicator of executive control abilities. Our findings suggest no relation between prosodic abilities and visual search and processing speed (assessed by CCTT-1), but a significant link between prosodic skills and divided attention, working memory/sequencing, set-switching, and inhibition (assessed by CCTT-2 and CCTT Interference Index). These findings may be of clinical relevance since difficulties in EFs and prosodic deficits are characteristic of many neurodevelopmental disorders. Future studies are needed to further investigate the nature of the relationship between impaired prosody and executive (dys)function.

Prosody Perception and Production in Children with Hearing Loss and Age- and Gender-Matched Controls.

Auditory development in children with hearing loss, including the perception of prosody, depends on having adequate input from cochlear implants and/or hearing aids. Lack of adequate auditory stimulation can lead to delayed speech and language development. Nevertheless, prosody perception and production in people with hearing loss have received less attention than other aspects of language. The perception of auditory information conveyed through prosody using variations in the pitch, amplitude, and duration of speech is not usually evaluated clinically. This study (1) compared prosody perception and production abilities in children with hearing loss and children with normal hearing; and (2) investigated the effect of age, hearing level, and musicality on prosody perception. Participants were 16 children with hearing loss and 16 typically developing controls matched for age and gender. Fifteen of the children with hearing loss were tested while using amplification (n = 9 hearing aids, n = 6 cochlear implants). Six receptive subtests of the Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (PEPS-C), the Child Paralanguage subtest of Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy 2 (DANVA 2), and Contour and Interval subtests of the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA) were used. Audio recordings of the children's reading samples were rated using a perceptual prosody rating scale by nine experienced listeners who were blinded to the children's hearing status. Thirty two children, 16 with hearing loss (mean age = 8.71 yr) and 16 age- and gender-matched typically developing children with normal hearing (mean age = 8.87 yr). Assessments were completed in one session lasting 1-2 hours in a quiet room. Test items were presented using a laptop computer through loudspeaker at a comfortable listening level. For children with hearing loss using hearing instruments, all tests were completed with hearing devices set at their everyday listening setting. All PEPS-C subtests and total scores were significantly lower for children with hearing loss compared to controls (p < 0.05). The hearing loss group performed more poorly than the control group in recognizing happy, sad, and fearful emotions in the DANVA 2 subtest. Musicality (composite MBEA scores and musical experience) was significantly correlated with prosody perception scores, but this link was not evident in the regression analyses. Regression modeling showed that age and hearing level (better ear pure-tone average) accounted for 55.4% and 56.7% of the variance in PEPS-C and DANVA 2 total scores, respectively. There was greater variability for the ratings of pitch, pitch variation, and overall impression of prosody in the hearing loss group compared to control group. Prosody perception (PEPS-C and DANVA 2 total scores) and ratings of prosody production were not correlated. Children with hearing loss aged 7-12 yr had significant difficulties in understanding different aspects of prosody and were rated as having more atypical prosody overall than controls. These findings suggest that clinical assessment and speech-language therapy services for children with hearing loss should be expanded to target prosodic difficulties. Future studies should investigate whether musical training is beneficial for improving receptive prosody skills.

Prosodic development in European Portuguese from childhood to adulthood

ABSTRACTWe describe the European Portuguese version of a test of prosodic abilities originally developed for English: the Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (Peppé &amp; McCann, 2003). Using this test, we examined the development of several components of European Portuguese prosody between 5 and 20 years of age (N= 131). Results showed prosodic performance improving with age: 5-year-olds reach adultlike performance in the affective prosodic tasks; 7-year-olds mastered the ability to discriminate and produce short prosodic items, as well as the ability to understand question versus declarative intonation; 8-year-olds mastered the ability to discriminate long prosodic items; 9-year-olds mastered the ability to produce question versus declarative intonation, as well as the ability to identify focus; 10- to 11-year-olds mastered the ability to produce long prosodic items; 14- to 15-year-olds mastered the ability to comprehend and produce syntactically ambiguous utterances disambiguated by prosody; and 18- to 20-year-olds mastered the ability to produce focus. Cross-linguistic comparisons showed that linguistic form–meaning relations do not necessarily develop at the same pace across languages. Some prosodic contrasts are hard to achieve for younger Portuguese-speaking children, namely, the production of chunking and focus.

Prosody Perception in Typically Developing School-aged Children

Purpose: To report normative data for prosody perception abilities in typically developing school-aged children. Method: Four receptive prosody subtests of the Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (PEPSC) and the Child Paralanguage subtest of Diagnostic Analysis of Non Verbal Accuracy 2 (DANVA 2) were administered to 45 children divided into three age groups, with mean ages 7.84, 10.13, and 11.90 years. Results: Overall results indicated significant age-related improvements in performance on PEPS-C Chunking and Contrastive Stress Reception subtests. Accuracy for emotion recognition differed significantly across the two levels of emotion intensity for the DANVA 2. High emotion intensity items yielded better accuracy compared to low intensity items. A confusion matrix for the DANVA 2 showed that errors were not randomly distributed; some pairs of emotions were confused with one another more often than others. The lowest perceptual accuracy was observed for fear and sadness. Conclusions: Normative data for prosody perception abilities in typically developing school aged children were reported using PEPS-C receptive prosody subtests and DANVA 2 Child Paralanguage subtest. The development of receptive prosodic skills mostly occurs between 7 and 9 years. Findings of this study have clinical implications for assessing prosody perception in atypical populations.

Prosody perception and musical pitch discrimination in adults using cochlear implants

Objectives: This study investigated prosodic perception and musical pitch discrimination in adults using cochlear implants (CI), and examined the relationship between prosody perception scores and non-linguistic auditory measures, demographic variables, and speech recognition scores. Design: Participants were given four subtests of the PEPS-C (profiling elements of prosody in speech-communication), the adult paralanguage subtest of the DANVA 2 (diagnostic analysis of non verbal accuracy 2), and the contour and interval subtests of the MBEA (Montreal battery of evaluation of amusia). Study sample: Twelve CI users aged 25;5 to 78;0 years participated. Results: CI participants performed significantly more poorly than normative values for New Zealand adults for PEPS-C turn-end, affect, and contrastive stress reception subtests, but were not different from the norm for the chunking reception subtest. Performance on the DANVA 2 adult paralanguage subtest was lower than the normative mean reported by Saindon (2010). Most of the CI participants performed at chance level on both MBEA subtests. Conclusion: CI users have difficulty perceiving prosodic information accurately. Difficulty in understanding different aspects of prosody and music may be associated with reduced pitch perception ability.

Assessing the Relationship Between Prosody and Reading Outcomes in Children Using the PEPS-C

This study investigated the relationship between both receptive and expressive prosody and each of three reading outcomes: accuracy of reading aloud words, accuracy of reading aloud nonwords, and comprehension. Participants were 63 children aged 7 to 12 years. To assess prosody, we used the Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech Communication (PEPS-C; Peppé & McCann, 2003). Results revealed that certain subtests of the PEPS-C predicted a substantial proportion of variance across reading outcomes, even after age and segmental phonological awareness have been considered. In fact, our findings suggest that the PEPS-C compares favourably with a well-established test of segmental phonological awareness, the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP; Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte, 1999), in terms of its power to predict variability in children’s reading.

Preschool children's performance on Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (PEPS-C)

Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (PEPS-C) has not been used widely to assess prosodic abilities of preschool children. This study was therefore aimed at investigating typically developing 4-year-olds' performance on PEPS-C. PEPS-C was presented to 30 typically developing 4-year-olds recruited in southern Ireland. Children were judged to have completed the test if they produced analysable responses to >95% of the items. The children's scores were compared with data from typically developing 5–6-year-olds. The majority (83%) of 4-year-olds were able to complete the test. The children scored at chance or weak ability levels on all subtests. The 4-year-olds had lower scores than 5–6-year-olds in all subtests, apart from one, with the difference reaching statistical significance in 8 out of 12 subtests. The results indicate that PEPS-C could be a valuable tool for assessing prosody in young children with typical development and some groups of young children with communication disorders.

Benchmarking Typically Developing Children’s Prosodic Performance on the Irish-English Version of the Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (PEPS-C)

Objective: To develop the Irish-English version of the Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (PEPS-C) assessment, identify the normal prosodic performance of typically developing children aged 5–11 years on the PEPS-C assessment, and identify significant age-related changes between different age groups. Method: Thirty typically developing children between the ages of 5;9 and 11;1 years completed the PEPS-C assessment, which involved both receptive and expressive tasks. Results: Significant differences were found between the youngest group’s prosodic performance and the two older groups. The 5- to 6-year-old age group performed less well than the 10- to 11-year-old age group (p &lt; 0.05). The 10- to 11-year-old age group performed above chance level on all prosodic tasks. Conclusion: While 5- and 6-year-old children have acquired some functional prosodic skills, there are further developments between the ages of 5;9 and 9;5, with some aspects of prosody continuing to develop up to 11 years.

Assessing prosodic skills in five European languages: Cross-linguistic differences in typical and atypical populations

Following demand for a prosody assessment procedure, the test Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (PEPS-C), has been translated from English into Spanish, French, Flemish and Norwegian. This provides scope to examine receptive and expressive prosodic ability in Romance (Spanish and French) as well as Germanic (English and Flemish) languages, and includes the possibility of assessing these skills with regard to lexical tone (Norwegian). Cross-linguistic similarities and differences relevant to the translation are considered. Preliminary findings concerning 8-year-old neurotypical children speaking the five languages are reported. The appropriateness of investigating contrastive stress in Romance as well as Germanic languages is considered: results are reported for assessing this skill in Spanish and English speakers and suggest that in Spanish it is acquired much later than in English. We also examine the feasibility of assessing and comparing prosodic disorder in the five languages, using assessments of prosody in Spanish and English speakers with Williams syndrome as an example. We conclude that, with caveats, the original design of the UK test may indicate comparable stages of prosodic development in neurotypical children and is appropriate for the evaluation of prosodic skills for adults and children, both neurotypical and with impairment, in all five languages.

Linguistic rules for text-to-speech synthesis

Prosody plays the role in speech ot producing a spoken message meaningful to a particular circumstance, from otherwise unweighted abstract units called phonemes. In the process of message formation, phonemes are given proper acoustic characterization according to the syntactic and semantic structure of the message, the location of stress and boundaries, and surrounding phonemes. Since this process occurs at a subconscious level, it has not received attention from researchers in the language related fields until recently. The recent progress in speech-synthesis techniques has made us aware of the importance of prosody in speech communication, and has encouraged the rule formation for this process. This paper concerns work at Bell Laboratories in the area of purely automatic (i.e., nonhuman) text synthesis. It summarizes the development of related prosody rules from natural speech data.