Exploring the Relationship between Prosodic Control and Social Competence in Children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder characterized by persistent deficits in social communication and interaction. Speech is an important form of social communication. Prosody (e.g. vocal pitch, rhythm, etc.), one aspect of the speech signal, is crucial for ensuring information about the emotionality, excitability, and intent of the speaker, is accurately expressed. The objective of this study was to gain a better understanding of how auditory information is used to regulate speech prosody in autistic and non-autistic children, while exploring the relationship between the prosodic control of speech and social competence. Eighty autistic (M = 8.48 years, SD = 2.55) and non-autistic (M = 7.36 years, SD = 2.51) participants produced vocalizations while exposed to unaltered and frequency altered auditory feedback. The parent-report Multidimensional Social Competence Scale was used to assess social competence, while the Autism-Spectrum Quotient and the Autism Spectrum Rating Scales were used to assess autism characteristics. Results indicate that vocal response magnitudes and vocal variability were similar across autistic and non-autistic children. However, autistic children produced significantly faster responses to the auditory feedback manipulation. Hierarchical multiple regressions indicated that these faster responses were significantly associated with poorer parent-rated social competence and higher autism characteristics. These findings suggest that prosodic speech production differences are present in at least a subgroup of autistic children. These results represent a key step in understanding how atypicalities in the mechanisms supporting speech production may manifest in social-communication deficits, as well as broader social competence, and vice versa. Autism Res 2020, 13: 1880-1892. © 2020 International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals LLC LAY SUMMARY: In this study, autistic and non-autistic children produced vowel sounds while listening to themselves through headphones. When the children heard their vocal pitch shifted upward or downward, they compensated by shifting their vocal pitch in the opposite direction. Interestingly, autistic children were faster to correct for the perceived vowel sound changes than their typically developing peers. Faster responses in the children with ASD were linked to poorer ratings of their social abilities by their parent. These results suggest that autistic and non-autistic children show differences in how quickly they control their speech, and these differences may be related to the social challenges experienced by autistic children.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".