A Comparative Study of the Prosodic Features between Autism Spectrum Disorder and Normal Children in Korean Read Sentence

Jung, Kum-Soo; Seong, Cheol-Jae

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2007;12(4): 625-642.

Kum-Soo Jung^` , and Cheol-Jae Seong^`

정금수(Kum-Soo Jung)| 성철재(Cheol-Jae Seong)

ABSTRACT

Backgrounds & Objectives
It is generally accepted that children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have deficits in prosody and thereby have difficulties in communication. In this study, the prosodic features shown by ASD and normal children when reading declarative sentences were analyzed and compared, including fundamental frequency, the various speed aspects, and prosodic phrasing.
Methods
The ASD group consists of elementary school students and the normal group consists of preschool children. The experimental subjects consisted of 10 ASD and 10 normal children with a receptive vocabulary age of 5.0-6.5 years. They were all male children. The experimental materials were composed of 10 declarative sentences, each of which consisted of 5-6 words. All of the children were asked to read the sentences repetitively. Some of the sentences, which were naturally produced by the children, were selected for analysis.
Results
As a result of the analysis, many differences were observed between the two groups and some of them showed statistically significant differences. First, the fundamental frequency was on average 40Hz higher in ASD children than in normal children. Second, both groups showed no significant differences in the overall reading rate, but showed statistically significant differences in their articulation rate. Third, both groups showed statistical differences in the number of appearances of accentual phrases (AP) and intonational phrases (IP).
Discussion & Conclusion
There are differences between the two groups. They included fundamental frequency, articulation rate, and number of accentual phrases in an intonational phrase.