Prosodic Entrainment in Conversations of Verbal Children and Teens on the Autism Spectrum.

Unusual speech prosody has long been recognized as a characteristic feature of the speech of individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). However, research to determine the exact nature of this difference in speech prosody is still ongoing. Many individuals with verbal autism perform well on tasks testing speech prosody. Nonetheless, their expressive prosody is judged to be unusual by others. We propose that one aspect of this perceived difference in speech prosody in individuals with ASD may be due to a deficit in the ability to entrain-or become more similar-to their conversation partners in prosodic features over the course of a conversation. In order to investigate this hypothesis, 24 children and teens between the ages of 9 and 15 years participated in our study. Twelve of the participants had previously been diagnosed with ASD and the other 12 participants were matched to the ASD participants in age, gender, and non-verbal IQ scores. All participants completed a goal-directed conversation task, which was subsequently analyzed acoustically. Our results suggest (1) that youth diagnosed with ASD entrain less to their conversation partners compared to their neurotypical peers-in fact, children and teens diagnosed with ASD tend to dis-entrain from their conversation partners while their neurotypical peers tend to converge to their conversation partners' prosodic features. (2) Although age interacts differently with prosodic entrainment in youth with and without ASD, this difference is attributable to the entrainment behavior of the conversation partners rather than to those with ASD. (3) Better language skill is negatively correlated with prosodic entrainment for both youth with and without ASD. The observed differences in prosodic entrainment in children and teens with ASD may not only contribute to the perceived unusual prosody in youth with ASD but are also likely to be indicative of their difficulties in social communication, which constitutes a core challenge for individuals with ASD.

The Relationship between Prosodic Ability and Conversational Prosodic Entrainment.

Conversational entrainment or alignment-the convergence of conversation partners over the course of a conversation in a variety of linguistic features-is a well-attested conversational phenomenon. The research on prosodic entrainment has shown correlations between prosodic entrainment and several social dimensions of rapport between conversation partners. However, little is known about how skill-level in the entrainment domain affects the ability to converge during a conversation. The goal of the current study was to investigate whether skill-level of a speaker in receptive and expressive word, sentence, and emotional prosody is correlated with the amount of prosodic entrainment contributed at the conversational level. Twenty native speakers of American English were paired into ten dyads of seven female/female and three female/male conversation pairs. Conversations for each pair were recorded and analyzed. Test scores measuring word, sentence, and emotional prosody were correlated with the amount of fundamental frequency entrainment during conversations. The results indicate that a negative correlation exists between expressive prosody skill and the amount of f0 entrainment contributed by a speaker. This suggests that speakers with better expressive prosodic skills at the word and sentence level entrain less to their conversation partners. Receptive prosody ability was not correlated with conversational prosodic entrainment.

The Production of Question Intonation by Young Adult Cochlear Implant Users: Does Age at Implantation Matter?

Purpose The purpose of this observational study was to investigate the properties of sentence-final prosody in yes/no questions produced by cochlear implant (CI) users in order to determine whether and how the age at CI implantation impacts CI users' production of question intonation later in life. Method We acoustically analyzed recordings from 46 young adult CI users and 10 young adults with normal hearing who read yes/no questions. Of the 46 CI users, 20 had received their CI before the age of 4.0 years (early implantation group), 15 between ages 4.0 and 8.11 years (midimplantation group), and 11 at the age of 9.0 years or later (late implantation group). We assessed the prosodic properties of the produced questions for each implantation group and the normal hearing comparison group (a) by measuring the sentence-final rise in fundamental frequency, (b) by labeling the question-final intonation contour using the Tones and Breaks Index ( Beckman & Ayers, 1994 ; Silverman, Beckman, et al., 1992 ; Veilleux, Shattuck-Hufnagel, & Brugos, 2006 ), and (c) by assessing phrase-final lengthening. Results The fundamental frequency rises produced by all CI users exhibited a smaller magnitude than those produced by the normal hearing comparison group, although the difference between early implanted CI users and the normal hearing group did not reach statistical significance. Early implanted CI users were more comparable in their use of question-final intonation contours to the individuals with typical hearing than to those users with CI implanted later in life. All CI users exhibited significantly less phrase-final lengthening than the normal hearing comparison group, regardless of age at CI implantation. Conclusion The results of this investigation of question intonation produced by CI users suggest that those CI users who were implanted with CI earlier in life produce yes/no question intonation in a manner that is more similar to, albeit not the same as, individuals with normal hearing when compared to the productions of those users with CI implanted after 4.0 years of age.

The Haskins optically corrected ultrasound system (HOCUS).

The tongue is critical in the production of speech, yet its nature has made it difficult to measure. Not only does its ability to attain complex shapes make it difficult to track, it is also largely hidden from view during speech. The present article describes a new combination of optical tracking and ultrasound imaging that allows for a noninvasive, real-time view of most of the tongue surface during running speech. The optical system (Optotrak) tracks the location of external structures in 3-dimensional space using infrared emitting diodes (IREDs). By tracking 3 or more IREDs on the head and a similar number on an ultrasound transceiver, the transduced image of the tongue can be corrected for the motion of both the head and the transceiver and thus be represented relative to the hard structures of the vocal tract. If structural magnetic resonance images of the speaker are available, they may allow the estimation of the location of the rear pharyngeal wall as well. This new technique is contrasted with other currently available options for imaging the tongue. It promises to provide high-quality, relatively low-cost imaging of most of the tongue surface during fairly unconstrained speech.