International Meeting for Autism Research (London, May 15-17, 2008): Effects of enhanced prosody on narrative recall in children with autism

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Champagne Terrace/Bordeaux (Novotel London West)

L. Black , Center for Spoken Language Understanding (CSLU), OHSU, Beaverton, OR

J. Van Santen , Center for Spoken Language Understanding (CSLU), OHSU, Beaverton, OR

R. Coulston , Center for Spoken Language Understanding (CSLU), OHSU, Beaverton, OR

R. Paul , Yale Child Study Center, Southern Connecticut State University

J. De Villiers , Center for Spoken Language Understanding (CSLU), OHSU, Beaverton, OR

Background: Professionals are known to use enhanced prosody in working with children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). However, no scientific evidence exists that enhanced prosody facilitates engagement, comprehension, or retention of information in ASD.

Objectives: The purpose of the study was to measure the effects of prosodic style on narrative recall performance in children with ASD vs. Typical Development (TD).

Methods: Participants (ages 4-7) underwent diagnostic and neurocognitive assessment. Two stories were developed depicting interpersonally dynamic and affectively-charged events, rich in factual and social cognitive information. They were produced in three prosodic modes. (E) Enhanced: Prosody highlights story content and meaning at multiple levels (using affective, pragmatic, and grammatical prosody); it differs from “storyteller” style which captures attention but does not necessarily highlight meaning. (S) Standard. (D) Disconnected: Words were recorded randomly, concatenated into sentences, and acoustically modified to have continuous pitch and energy contours. Additional signal modification methods were used to match the modes on average pitch, energy, speaking rate, and pause duration. Separate questions were developed for factual and social-cognitive aspects of the story.

Results: For ASD, a clear trend was observed for story recall to be best in E mode, next in S mode, and worst in D mode. No such trend was observed in the TD group. TD performed better than ASD in all modes. There was a significant interaction between the E vs. D contrast and Group (ASD vs. TD); in E compared to D, the TD-ASD difference was significantly reduced. Social-cognitive questions were more difficult than factual questions for both groups.

Conclusions: The results suggest that enhanced prosody specifically targeted to highlight the multiple levels of information in complex verbal communication may help comprehension and retention of information in children with ASD. This has potentially important implications for intervention as well as for assessment.

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