PROSODY AND CHILDREN PROSODY AND CHILDREN WITH AUTISM.WITH AUTISM.

Joanne McCann1, Marion Rutherford2 ,Sue Pepp1, Fiona Gibbon1 & Anne OHare2&3.

NAS 2005 International Conference1Queen Margaret University College, Edinburgh

2 Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh3Child Life and Health, University of Edinburgh

http://sls.qmuc.ac.uk/research/autism/index.htm

Background: Prosody & ASD

Disordered expressive prosody frequently described in autism captured in standardised assessments e.g. ADOS. perceived by listeners as poor inflection and

excessive or misassigned stress an added barrier to social acceptance.

Receptive prosody May underpin disordered expressive prosody Hardly researched at all

Study Aims

To determine if children with autism have impaired receptive and expressive prosody compared to typical children matched for verbal mental age. What is the nature of these impairments? Is there a relationship between prosody and

language? Is there a relationship between receptive and

expressive prosody?

Method

All of the children completed the PEPS-C test (Profiling Elements of Prosodic Systems in Children, Pepp and McCann, 2003) which is a comprehensive test of both expressive and receptive prosodic ability and the BPVS-II (Dunn et al. 1997).

The children with autism completed a further battery of speech, language and nonverbal assessments.

PEPS-CProfiling Elements of Prosodic Systems in Children

Results

An independent samples t-test showed that the children with autism performed significantly poorer on the PEPS-C than VMA-matched TD children (p

Results Cont: Children with Autism Prosody results correlated highly with

language but not with non verbal ability, articulation or chronological age. Receptive Vocabulary (r=0.559;p=0.001) Receptive Grammar (r=0.604;p

Implications for Communication:General Prosodic Impairment A difficulty in understanding and using prosody

may have many consequences for communication, affecting socialisation.

If children have monotonous prosody then they may sound disinterested in something because they dont know how to use prosody to express enthusiasm.

Or, if they cannot hear the stress or emphasis on a word in a sentence, then they might miss the important point of what is being said to them.

Despite these difficulties, prosody is rarely addressed in therapy or education.

Future Directions

Project funded by ESRC investigating prosody in children with Aspergers Syndrome

PhD student following-up the children in the HFA study and investigating their Theory of Mind skills

Pilot prosody therapy programme.

Summary Children with autism have significantly impaired

receptive and expressive prosody. Receptive and expressive prosody correlates with

language in both children with autism and typical children.

Prosodic impairment was particularly marked in the children with autisms understanding and use of affect

These findings support the need for further research in The relationship between prosody and social communication Intervention Prosodic ability in children with language impairment

Acknowledgements

Grateful thanks to: all the children who participated their families their teachers and schools their Speech and Language

Therapists the Scottish Health Executives Chief

Scientist Office for funding.

Key ReferencesMcCann,J. & Pepp,S. (2003). Prosody in Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Critical Review. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 38(4),325-350

Pepp,S. & McCann,J. (2003). Assessing intonation and prosody in children with atypical language development: the PEPS-C test and the revised version. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 17(4-5),345-354

http://sls.qmuc.ac.uk/research/autism/index.htm