Sounds of melody--pitch patterns of speech in autism.
The objective of this study was to find a pattern in vocalizations of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). We compared the intonational features of 15 children with ASD who showed speech, aged 4-10 years, with 10 age-matched typically developing controls. Exaggerated pitch, pitch range, pitch excursion and pitch contours were observed in speech of children with autism, but absent in age-matched controls. These exaggerated features, which are distinctive characteristics of motherese, were also seen in interactions of an independent group of 8 mothers of typical infants using child-directed speech. Our findings provide the first evidence of a distinct pattern in vocal output from children with autism. They also demonstrate that speech patterns might follow a delayed developmental trajectory in these children.
Sharda
Megha
M
National Brain Research Centre, NH-8, Nainwal Mode, Manesar 122 050, India.
Subhadra
T Padma
TP
Sahay
Sanchita
S
Nagaraja
Chetan
C
Singh
Latika
L
Mishra
Ramesh
R
Sen
Amit
A
Singhal
Nidhi
N
Erickson
Donna
D
Singh
Nandini C
NC
D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002659:Child Development Disorders, Pervasive / Q000523:psychology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D014705:Verbal Behavior