Perceived atypicality of speech prosody in Finnish-speaking adolescents with autism spectrum disorder
Keywords:
autism, autism spectrum disorder, intonation, prosody, speechAbstract
This study explores the perceived atypicality of the prosody of persons with autism spectrum
disorder (ASD). The data consist of speech samples produced by 11- to 13-year-old Finnish-
speaking boys with ASD
(n
= 5), and by age- and gender-matched controls
(n
= 6). The speech
samples have been collected from spontaneous speech. A perception test was administered
to 50 neurotypical university students (
n
= 50). The results show that neurotypical adults
find the prosody of preadolescent boys with ASD more atypical than the prosody of age- and
gender-matched controls. According to the acoustic analyses and the written answers of the
raters, the perceptions of atypicality may be generated by sing-song-like or bouncing pitch,
disconnected speech rhythm, large pitch excursions or flatness of pitch. The impression of
atypicality is further emphasized if there are occurrences of morpho-syntactic problems (such
as wrong case endings and disconnected syntactic structures), if some words are unintelligible
and if articulation is lethargic, for example. A creaky voice, which was common in the speech
samples, did not attract the attention of the raters. The speech of the informants with ASD
was frequently thought to have been produced by a non-native speaker of Finnish, although
all the informants were monolingual speakers of the language. The raters also found it difficu
to understand what the informants with ASD were saying in the speech samples. The results of
this study have clinical implications in terms of increasing awareness of prosodic deficiencie
among Finnish-speaking preadolescents with ASD.
