Conversational correlates of rapid social judgments of children and adolescents with and without ASD.
Aaron Shield, Xin Wang, Daniel Bone and 2 others
PMID 32520595WHAT IT FOUND
Online listeners judged young people with ASD more positively when their first 30 seconds had wider pitch range and pauses within their own turns.
Longer silence after questions, less speech, and faster speech were linked with lower ratings.
Key findings
01Wider pitch range and more pauses within the child's own turn were linked with more positive total social ratings.
02Longer silence after questions, a higher pause-to-speech ratio, and faster speech were linked with more negative total social ratings.
03Autism symptom severity, language, and non-verbal intelligence were not significant predictors of the social ratings.
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 only 21 children and adolescents with ASD, so it is exploratory and may not apply to larger or more varied groups. There was no comparison group of children without ASD, so it is unknown how these speech features would be judged in typical conversation. Ratings were made by online workers listening to only the first 30 seconds, so they may not reflect judgments from clinicians, teachers, peers, or longer interactions. All participants had language and non-verbal intelligence in the normal range, and symptom scores had limited variability, so findings may not apply to less verbal children or those with more varied symptom levels.
Declared interests
The authors report no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read these ratings as showing that ASD itself causes negative social judgments. The study included only children with ASD, so it cannot compare how listeners rate them against children without ASD.