An Acoustic Characterization of Prosodic Differences in Autism Spectrum Disorder and First-Degree Relatives.
Shivani P Patel, Kritika Nayar, Gary E Martin and 4 others
PMID 32056118WHAT IT FOUND
Listeners reliably picked out atypical intonation in autism, yet objective acoustic measurements of pitch variability and rhythm showed no group differences.
Speech rate was the only acoustic feature distinguishing both individuals with autism and their unaffected parents with broad autism phenotype traits.
Key findings
01Individuals with autism spoke significantly slower than controls, but showed no group differences in pitch variability or rhythm.
02Listeners identified atypical intonation in the autism group, but acoustic measurements did not reflect these perceived differences.
03Parents of individuals with autism who had broad autism phenotype traits showed lower mean pitch, higher pitch range, and greater speech rate slowing as utterances lengthened.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study included a low number of female participants with autism, and the finding of slower speech rate appeared driven by males, limiting generalizability to females. Acoustic analysis was restricted to prosodic production; receptive prosody skills were not assessed. Speech samples were collected during a single narrative task, so findings may not generalize to conversational contexts. The control group had significantly higher IQ scores than the autism group, which could confound acoustic measures despite statistical adjustments.
Declared interests
Funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. No conflicts of interest declared.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that acoustic analysis can rule out prosodic impairment in autism. Listeners perceived significant intonation differences in the autism group even though objective measurements of pitch variability and rhythm showed no group differences, indicating that standard acoustic metrics may fail to capture clinically relevant prosodic atypicalities.