The use of intonation in questions and narrative turns in the spontaneous interaction of boys afflicted with autism spectrum disorder
Keywords:
autism, autism spectrum disorder, conversation analysis, interaction, intonation, prosodyAbstract
Autism spectrum disorder is a neurobiological developmental disorder, characterized e.g.
by problems of social interaction, over-sensitivity to sensory stimuli as well as restricted
interests (APA, 2013). People afficted with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) o en have
deviant prosodic features in their speech. This article focuses on the utterance- nal rising
pitch and its use in questions and narrative turns in the spontaneous interaction of boys
with ASD. The topic is important because even if autistic persons’ prosodic features have
already been studied rather extensively, spontaneous interaction, which allows observing
the use of intonation by persons with ASD, has to date been studied very little.
The data originate from authentic group therapy sessions where 11–13-year-old boys a icted
with ASD talk with their therapists. Methods of phonetics and conversation analysis are
used in the study.
The results of the study suggest that boys with ASD are able to use utterance- nal rising pitch
as an interactional resource as well as to produce and interpret correctly prosodic features
that indicate nality in spontaneous interaction. They are also able to emphasize words with
the help of prosodic features, call for other participants’ reactions and indicate that they take
other participants into account with the help of utterance- nal pitch rises. Thus, boys with
ASD seem to be able to use intonation as an interactional resource, even though reciprocal
interaction is generally speaking di cult for people a icted with autism (APA, 2013).
