Attention to emotional tone of voice in speech perception in children with autism

A video game was developed to assess speech perception in 13 children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and 13 children with typical development (TYP), ages 5–17 years old. Children listened to pre-recorded sentences varying in content (e.g., “Bob parked a van” vs. “Tim shut a door”) and prosody (i.e., enthusiastic vs. grouchy tone of voice). During training, children learned to select one of two sentences differing in both content and prosody (e.g., enthusiastic “Bob parked a van” vs. grouchy “Tim shut a door”). At testing, children listened to test probes comprising re-combinations of the content and prosodic features of the training sentences. Testing indicated that both groups showed accurate discrimination of the training sentences from the re-combined test probes. However, whereas TYP children showed a preference to select the sentence with enthusiastic prosody over its grouchy counterpart, children with ASD did not. Thus, children with ASD show atypical attention to emotional tone of voice, even though they show no deficit in perceiving prosody.     

Attention and basic literacy and numeracy in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A one-year follow-up study

Little is known about the link between Executive Functioning (EF) and academic performance in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and how such links develop over time. This study examined word reading, basic mathematics, attention switching, sustained attention and their development. Two age, gender and perceptual IQ matched groups of cognitively able 7–12 year olds (ASD N = 40; typical developing [TYP] N = 40) were assessed at baseline and one year later, completing Word Reading and Numerical Operations tests and computerized tasks tapping attention switching and sustained attention. Children with ASD had similar word reading and numerical operations performance and similar development of these skills relative to TYP children. A delay in attention switching but similar development was found in children with ASD relative to TYP children. The EF tasks were correlated with reading and mathematics in ASD children only, however, in regression analyses these factors were not significant predictors of Time 2 reading and mathematics after accounting for Time 1 reading and mathematics scores. These findings indicate similar word reading and mathematics development but atypical attention profiles in cognitively able children with ASD. Implications for educators are discussed.     

The Hypothesis of Apraxia of Speech in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

In a sample of 46 children aged 4–7 years with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and intelligible speech, there was no statistical support for the hypothesis of concomitant Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS). Perceptual and acoustic measures of participants’ speech, prosody, and voice were compared with data from 40 typically-developing children, 13 preschool children with Speech Delay, and 15 participants aged 5–49 years with CAS in neurogenetic disorders. Speech Delay and Speech Errors, respectively, were modestly and substantially more prevalent in participants with ASD than reported population estimates. Double dissociations in speech, prosody, and voice impairments in ASD were interpreted as consistent with a speech attunement framework, rather than with the motor speech impairments that define CAS.     

Exploring a method for evaluation of preschool and school children with autism spectrum disorder through checking their understanding of the speaker’s emotions with the help of prosody of the voice

Purpose

We attempted to evaluate the ability of 125 preschool and school children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD children) to understand the intentions of those speaking to them using prosody of the voice, by comparing it with that of 119 typically developing children (TDC) and 51 development-age-matched children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD children), and to explore, based on the results, a method for objective evaluation of children with ASD in the early and later periods of childhood.

The neural response to emotional prosody,as revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging

Prosody is an important feature of language, comprising intonation, loudness, and tempo. Emotional prosodic processing forms an integral part of our social interactions. The main aim of this study was to use bold contrast fMRI to clarify the normal functional neuroanatomy of emotional prosody, in passive and active contexts. Subjects performed six separate scanning studies, within which two different conditions were contrasted: (1) "pure" emotional prosody versus rest; (2) congruent emotional prosody versus 'neutral' sentences; (3) congruent emotional prosody versus rest; (4) incongruent emotional prosody versus rest; (5) congruent versus incongruent emotional prosody; and (6) an active experiment in which subjects were instructed to either attend to the emotion conveyed by semantic content or that conveyed by tone of voice. Data resulting from these contrasts were analysed using SPM99. Passive listening to emotional prosody consistently activated the lateral temporal lobe (superior and/or middle temporal gyri). This temporal lobe response was relatively right-lateralised with or without semantic information. Both the separate and direct comparisons of congruent and incongruent emotional prosody revealed that subjects used fewer brain regions to process incongruent emotional prosody than congruent. The neural response to attention to semantics, was left lateralised, and recruited an extensive network not activated by attention to emotional prosody. Attention to emotional prosody modulated the response to speech, and induced right-lateralised activity, including the middle temporal gyrus. In confirming the results of lesion and neuropsychological studies, the current study emphasises the importance of the right hemisphere in the processing of emotional prosody, specifically the lateral temporal lobes.     

The Role of Attention in the Academic Attainment of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Academic attainment in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is under-studied, with associated factors largely undetermined. Parent-reported attention symptoms, attentional-switching and sustained-attention tasks were examined to determine relationships with mathematics and reading attainment in 124 children aged 7–12 years; sixty-four with high-functioning ASD, half girls, and sixty age- and gender-matched typical children (TYP). With full-scale IQ controlled there were no differences in mathematics, reading, attentional switching or sustained attention. In regression analysis, attentional switching was related to mathematics achievement in ASD but not TYP children. Findings highlight attentional switching difficulties are linked with poorer mathematics outcomes in ASD.     

Attention to prosody (intonation) and content in children with autism and in typical children using spoken sentences in a computer game

This study validated a video game paradigm to explore attention to prosodic and linguistic components of spoken sentences in nine moderate-to-low functioning children with autism and impaired verbal skills. Nine typically developing children were also included. The children listened to pre-recorded sentences varying with respect to content (e.g., “Max ate a grape” vs. “Tom threw a ball”) and prosody (i.e., intonation of statement vs. question). During training, children learned to select one of two sentences differing in both content and prosody. At testing, children listened to stimuli consisting of recombinations of the content and prosodic features of the training stimuli. Testing performance indicated that the children with autism attended to the content and prosodic features of the training stimuli equally, whereas the children with typical development showed a clear preference for content over prosody. Both groups showed accurate discrimination of the training stimuli from the recombined test stimuli. The findings are interpreted in light of three approaches to explain the unusual attention patterns in autism: stimulus overselectivity, weak central coherence, and enhanced perceptual functioning.     

Deficient brainstem encoding of pitch in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

OBJECTIVE: Deficient prosody is a hallmark of the pragmatic (socially contextualized) language impairment in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Prosody communicates emotion and intention and is conveyed through acoustic cues such as pitch contour. Thus, the objective of this study was to examine the subcortical representations of prosodic speech in children with ASD. METHODS: Using passively evoked brainstem responses to speech syllables with descending and ascending pitch contours, we examined sensory encoding of pitch in children with ASD who had normal intelligence and hearing and were age-matched with typically developing (TD) control children. RESULTS: We found that some children on the autism spectrum show deficient pitch tracking (evidenced by increased Frequency and Slope Errors and reduced phase locking) compared with TD children. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first demonstration of subcortical involvement in prosody encoding deficits in this population of children. SIGNIFICANCE: Our findings may have implications for diagnostic and remediation strategies in a subset of children with ASD and open up an avenue for future investigations.     

Perception and Production of Prosody by Speakers with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Speakers with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) show difficulties in suprasegmental aspects of speech production, or prosody, those aspects of speech that accompany words and sentences and create what is commonly called tone of voice. However, little is known about the perception of prosody, or about the specific aspects of prosodic production that result in the perception of oddness. The present study examined the perception and production of a range of specific prosodic elements in an experimental protocol involving natural speech among speakers with ASD between 14 and 21 years of age, in comparison with a typical control group. Results revealed ceiling effects limiting interpretation of findings for some aspects of prosody. However, there were significant between-group differences in aspects of stress perception and production. The implications of these findings for understanding prosodic deficits is speakers with autism spectrum disorders, and for future research in this area, are discussed.     

Interpretation of wh-words in Mandarin-speaking high-functioning children with autism spectrum disorders

Mandarin wh-words shenme ‘what’ and shei ‘who’ can convey both question readings and statement readings, a distinction of which is subject to intonation cues (rising intonation vs. level intonation) in ambiguous sentences, or is influenced by semantic contexts in unambiguous sentences. In this study, we investigated the interpretation of wh-words in 4–15-year-old Mandarin-speaking high-functioning children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), as a comparison to typically developing (TD) children. The results showed that older children with ASD demonstrated unimpaired knowledge of the access to both readings, either by using intonation cues in ambiguous sentences or via semantic contexts in unambiguous sentences. However, compared to TD controls and older children with ASD, younger children with ASD appeared to have more difficulties with accessing the statement readings of these wh-words, though they had no problems with the question readings. To sum up, the experimental findings demonstrated children with ASD's relative strengths in understanding these linguistic properties specific to the interpretation of the Mandarin wh-words, though a complete capture of this knowledge is subject to a developmental effect. We discussed the results from the perspective the contribution the language faculty makes to language acquisition in children with ASD.     

Reading affect in the face and voice: neural correlates of interpreting communicative intent in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders

CONTEXT: Understanding a speaker's communicative intent in everyday interactions is likely to draw on cues such as facial expression and tone of voice. Prior research has shown that individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) show reduced activity in brain regions that respond selectively to the face and voice. However, there is also evidence that activity in key regions can be increased if task demands allow for explicit processing of emotion. OBJECTIVES: To examine the neural circuitry underlying impairments in interpreting communicative intentions in ASD using irony comprehension as a test case, and to determine whether explicit instructions to attend to facial expression and tone of voice will elicit more normative patterns of brain activity. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: Eighteen boys with ASD (aged 7-17 years, full-scale IQ >70) and 18 typically developing (TD) boys underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging at the Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center, University of California, Los Angeles. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Blood oxygenation level-dependent brain activity during the presentation of short scenarios involving irony. Behavioral performance (accuracy and response time) was also recorded. RESULTS: Reduced activity in the medial prefrontal cortex and right superior temporal gyrus was observed in children with ASD relative to TD children during the perception of potentially ironic vs control scenarios. Importantly, a significant group x condition interaction in the medial prefrontal cortex showed that activity was modulated by explicit instructions to attend to facial expression and tone of voice only in the ASD group. Finally, medial prefrontal cortex activity was inversely related to symptom severity in children with ASD such that children with greater social impairment showed less activity in this region. CONCLUSIONS: Explicit instructions to attend to facial expression and tone of voice can elicit increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, part of a network important for understanding the intentions of others, in children with ASD. These findings suggest a strategy for future intervention research.     

Response of anterior temporal cortex to syntactic and prosodic manipulations during sentence processing

Previous research has implicated a portion of the anterior temporal cortex in sentence-level processing. This region activates more to sentences than to word-lists, sentences in an unfamiliar language, and environmental sound sequences. The current study sought to identify the relative contributions of syntactic and prosodic processing to anterior temporal activation. We presented auditory stimuli where the presence of prosodic and syntactic structure was independently manipulated during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Three "structural" conditions included normal sentences, sentences with scrambled word order, and lists of content words. These three classes of stimuli were presented either with sentence prosody or with flat supra-lexical (list-like) prosody. Sentence stimuli activated a portion of the left anterior temporal cortex in the superior temporal sulcus (STS) and extending into the middle temporal gyrus, independent of prosody, and to a greater extent than any of the other conditions. An interaction between the structural conditions and prosodic conditions was seen in a more dorsal region of the anterior temporal lobe bilaterally along the superior temporal gyrus (STG). A post-hoc analysis revealed that this region responded either to syntactically structured stimuli or to nonstructured stimuli with sentence-like prosody. The results suggest a parcellation of anterior temporal cortex into 1) an STG region that is sensitive both to the presence of syntactic information and is modulated by prosodic manipulations (in nonsyntactic stimuli); and 2) a more inferior left STS/MTG region that is more selective for syntactic structure.     

Hyperlexia in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

We compared the reading-related skills of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders who have hyperlexia (ASD + HPL) with age-matched children with ASD without HPL (ASD - HPL) and with single-word reading-matched typically developing children (TYP). Children with ASD + HPL performed (1) better than did children with ASD - HPL on tasks of single-word reading and pseudoword decoding and (2) equivalently well compared to word-reading-matched TYP children on all reading-related tasks except reading comprehension. It appears that the general underlying model of single-word reading is the same in principle for "typical" and hyperlexic reading. Yet, the study revealed some dissimilarities between these two types of reading when more fine-grained cognitive and linguistic abilities were considered; these dissimilarities warrant further investigations.     

Failure is Not an Option: Risk-Taking is Moderated by Anxiety and Also by Cognitive Ability in Children and Adolescents Diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder

Understanding hetereogeneity in symptom expression across the autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is a major challenge for identifying causes and effective treatments. In 40 children and adolescents diagnosed with ASD and 37 IQ—and age-matched comparison participants (the TYP group), we found no differences in summary measures on an experimental risk-taking task. However, anxiety and IQ predicted risk-taking only in the ASD group. Risk-taking was correlated with behavioral inhibition in the ASD group and behavioral activation in the TYP group. We suggest that performance on the task was motivated by fear of failure in the ASD group and by sensitivity to reward in the TYP group. Behavioral markers of anxiety and cognitive ability may improve conceptualization of heterogeneity in ASD.     

The fMRI success rate of children and adolescents: Typical development,epilepsy, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder,and autism spectrum disorders

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in children is increasingly used in clinical application and in developmental research; however, little is known how pediatric patient and typically developing populations successfully complete studies. We examined pediatric success rates with epilepsy, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and typically developing children (TYP). We also examined the affect of age, and, for ADHD populations, medication status on success rates. We defined a successful fMRI individual run when the data were interpretable and included in group statistics. For unsuccessful runs, datasets with excessive motion or floor task performance were categorized when possible. All clinical groups scanned less successfully than controls; medication status did not affect ADHD success (epilepsy, 80%; ADHD (off methylphenidate), 77%; ADHD (on methylphenidate), 81%; ASD, 70%; TYP, 87%). Ten to 18‐year‐old had a significantly greater scan success rate than 4‐ to 6‐year‐old; adolescents (13‐ to 18‐year‐old) demonstrated greater scan success rates than 7‐ to 9‐year‐old. Success rate for completing an entire battery of experimental runs (n = 2–6), varied between 50–59% for patient populations and 69% for TYP (79% when excluding 4‐ to 6‐year‐old). Success rate for completing one run from a battery was greater than 90% for all groups, except for ASD (81%). These data suggest 20–30% more children should be recruited in these patient groups, but only 10–20% for TYP for research studies. Studies with 4‐ to 6‐year‐olds may require 20–40% additional participants; studies with 10‐ to 18‐year‐olds may require 10–15% additional participants. Hum Brain Mapp, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Atypical perceptual and neural processing of emotional prosodic changes in children with autism spectrum disorders

Objective

The present study explored the processing of emotional speech prosody in school-aged children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) but without marked language impairments (children with ASD [no LI]).

Comprehension of prosody in Huntington''s disease.

Patients with Huntington's Disease (HD) who were without dementia were compared to unilateral stroke patients and controls as previously reported in 1983, to discover if they had a prosodic defect. Subjects were presented tape-recorded speech filtered sentences and asked to indicate the tone of voice as happy, sad or angry (affective prosody), or as a question, command or statement (propositional prosody). HD patients were impaired in comprehension of both types of prosody compared to controls but were not different from stroke patients. A second study compared early HD patients with at-risk siblings and spouse controls on comprehension of affective and propositional prosody, discrimination of both types of prosody, rhythm discrimination and tonal memory (Seashore tests). HD patients were impaired in both comprehension and discrimination of all types of prosody. HD patients were less accurate than at-risk patients on the tonal memory task but not on the rhythm discrimination task. These findings suggest compromise in ability to understand the more subtle prosodic aspects of communication which may contribute to social impairment of HD patients very early in the course of the disease.     

Brief Report: Parental Child-Directed Speech as a Predictor of Receptive Language in Children with Autism Symptomatology

Facilitative linguistic input directly connected to children’s interest and focus of attention has become a recommended component of interventions for young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This longitudinal correlational study used two assessment time points and examined the association between parental undemanding topic-continuing talk related to the child’s attentional focus (i.e., follow-in comments) and later receptive language for 37 parent–child dyads with their young (mean = 21 months, range 15–24 months) children with autism symptomology. The frequency of parental follow-in comments positively predicted later receptive language after considering children’s joint attention skills and previous receptive language abilities.     

Can gaze-cueing be helpful for detecting sound in autism spectrum disorder?

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder characterized by impaired social interaction, including joint attention, but psychological studies generally have reported intact gaze-triggered joint attention in ASD. These studies used a uni-modal paradigm (i.e. visual cue–target pairs) with eyes or faces as cues and letters or dots as targets. However, it has not been determined whether joint attention is impaired under cross-modal conditions in ASD, although cross-modal impairment has been reported. This study investigated joint attention in ASD under cross-modal conditions with gaze stimuli as visual cues and two kinds of sound (social voice or non-social tone) stimuli as targets. The task for the subject was to locate the target sound and click as soon and as accurately as possible. The ASD group was impaired in joint attention when a tone was used as the target, while both groups showed joint attention to a voice. The results suggest that cross-modal joint attention is impaired in the ASD group when the cue–target relationship is weak (i.e. social cue and non-social target) while it is unimpaired when there is a strong cue–target relationship (i.e. social cue and social target).     

Speech intonation in children with autism spectrum disorder

Objective: The prosody of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has several abnormal features. We assessed the speech tone of children with ASD and of children with typical development (TD) by using a new quantitative acoustic analysis. Methods: Our study participants consisted of 63 children (26 with ASD and 37 with TD). The participants were divided into 4 groups based on their developmental features and age. We assessed the variety of the fundamental frequency (F0) pattern quantitatively, using pitch coefficient of variation (CV), considering the different F0 mean for each word. Results: (1) No significant difference was observed between the ASD and TD group at pre-school age. However, the TD group exhibited significantly greater pitch CV than the ASD group at school age. (2) In pitch CV, range and standard deviation of the whole speech of each participant, no significant differences were observed between the type of participants and age. (3) No significant correlation was found between the pitch CV of each word and the Japanese Autism Screening Questionnaire total score, or between the pitch CV of each word and the intelligence quotient levels in the ASD group. A significant correlation was observed between the pitch CV of each word and social reciprocal interaction score. Conclusions: We assessed the speech tone of children with ASD by using a new quantitative method. Monotonous speech in school-aged children with ASD was detected. The extent of monotonous speech was related to the extent of social reciprocal interaction in children with ASD.