Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-21T12:28:30.198Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The use of prosody during syntactic processing in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 August 2014

Joshua John Diehl ,
Carlyn Friedberg ,
Rhea Paul  and
Jesse Snedeker
Joshua John Diehl*
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame
Carlyn Friedberg
Affiliation:
Harvard University
Rhea Paul
Affiliation:
Yale University School of Medicine
Jesse Snedeker
Affiliation:
Harvard University
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Joshua John Diehl, Department of Psychology, 118 Haggar Hall, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556; E-mail: joshua.diehl@nd.edu.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this study, we employed an eye-gaze paradigm to explore whether children (ages 8–12) and adolescents (ages 12–18) with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are able to use prosodic cues to determine the syntactic structure of an utterance. Persons with ASD were compared to typically developing (TD) peers matched on age, IQ, gender, and receptive language abilities. The stimuli were syntactically ambiguous but had a prosodic break that indicated the appropriate interpretation (feel the frog … with the feather vs. feel … the frog with the feather). We found that all groups were equally sensitive to the initial prosodic cues that were presented. Children and teens with ASD used prosody to interpret the ambiguous phrase as rapidly and efficiently as their TD peers. However, when a different cue was presented in subsequent trials, the younger ASD group was more likely to respond in a manner consistent with the initial prosodic cue rather than the new one. Eye-tracking data indicated that both younger groups (ASD and TD) had trouble shifting their interpretation as the prosodic cue changed, but the younger TD group was able to overcome this interference and produce an action consistent with the prosodic cue.

Type
Regular Articles
Information
Development and Psychopathology , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , August 2015 , pp. 867 - 884
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adachi, T., Koedac, T., Hirabayashi, S., Maeoka, Y., Shiota, M., Wright, E. C., et al. (2004). The metaphor and sarcasm scenario test: A new instrument to help differentiate high functioning pervasive developmental disorder from attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Brain and Development, 26, 301–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adams, C., Green, J., Gilchrist, A., & Cox, A. (2002). Conversational behaviour of children with Asperger syndrome and conduct disorder. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 43, 679–690.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Allopena, P. D., Magnuson, J. S., & Tanenhaus, M. K. (1998). Tracking the time course of spoken word recognition using eye movements: Evidence for continuous mapping models. Journal of Memory and Language, 38, 419–439.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ambery, F., Russell, A., Perry, K., Morris, R., & Murphy, D. (2006). Neuropsychological functioning in adults with Asperger syndrome. Autism, 10, 551–564.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, text revision (4th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.Google Scholar
Baltaxe, C. A. M. (1984). Use of contrastive stress in normal, aphasic, and autistic children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 27, 97–105.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baltaxe, C., & Guthrie, D. (1987). The use of primary sentence stress by normal, aphasic, and autistic children. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 17, 255–271.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Beckman, M. E. (1996). The parsing of prosody. Language and Cognitive Processes, 11, 17–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brock, J., Norbury, C. F., Einav, S., & Nation, K. (2008). Do individuals with autism process words in context? Evidence from language-mediated eye-movements. Cognition, 108, 896–904.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chevallier, C., Noveck, I., Happé, F., & Wilson, D. (2009). From acoustics to grammar: Perceiving and interpreting grammatical prosody in adolescents with Asperger syndrome. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 3, 502–516.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chevallier, C., Noveck, I., Happé, F., & Wilson, D. (2011). What's in a voice? Prosody as a test case for the theory of mind account of autism. Neuropsychologia, 49, 507–517.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chevallier, C., Wilson, D., Happé, F., & Noveck, I. (2010) Scalar inferences in autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 40, 1104–1117.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Choi, Y., & Mazuka, R. (2003). Young children's use of prosody in sentence parsing. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 32, 197–217.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Christophe, A., Millotte, S., Bernal, S., & Lidz, J. (2008). Bootstrapping lexical and syntactic acquisition. Language and Speech, 51, 61–75.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cutler, A. D., Dahan, D., & van Donselaar, W. (1997). Prosody in the comprehension of spoken language: A literature review. Language and Speech, 40, 141–201.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Diehl, J. J., Bennetto, L., Watson, D., Gunlogson, C., & McDonough, J. (2008). Resolving ambiguity: A psycholinguistic approach to understanding prosody processing in high-functioning autism. Brain and Language, 106, 144–152.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Diehl, J. J., & Paul, R. (2012). Acoustic differences in the imitation of prosodic patterns in children with autism spectrum disorders. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 6, 123–134.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Diehl, J. J., & Paul, R. (2013). Acoustic and perceptual measurements of prosody production on the Profiling Elements of Prosodic Systems in Children by children with autism. Applied Psycholinguistics, 34, 135–161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diehl, J. J., Watson, D. G., Bennetto, L., McDonough, J., & Gunlogson, C. (2009). An acoustic analysis of prosody in high-functioning autism. Applied Psycholinguistics, 30, 385–404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elliott, C. D. (1990). Differential ability scales. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Frith, U., & Snowling, M. (1983). Reading for meaning and reading for sound in autistic and dyslexic children. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 1, 329–342.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ghaziuddin, M., & Gerstein, L. (1996). Pedantic speaking style differentiates Asperger syndrome from high-functioning autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 26, 585–595.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Golan, O., Baron-Cohen, S., Hill, J. J., & Rutherford, M. D. (2007). The Reading the Mind in the Voice Test—Revised: A study of complex emotion recognition in adults with and without autism spectrum conditions. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 37, 1096–1106.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Green, H., & Tobin, Y. (2009). Prosodic analysis is difficult—But worth it: A study in high functioning autism. International Journal of Speech–Language Pathology, 11, 308–315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grossman, R. B., Bemis, R. H., Plesa Skwerer, D., & Tager-Flusberg, H. (2010). Lexical and affective prosody in children with high-functioning autism. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 53, 778–793.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hala, S., Pexman, P. M., & Glenwright, M. (2007). Priming the meaning of homographs in typically developing children and children with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 37, 329–340.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Happé, F. (1997). Central coherence and theory of mind in autism: Reading homographs in context. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 15, 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hill, E. (2004). Executive dysfunctions in autism. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 26–32.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ito, K., & Speer, S. R. (2008). Anticipatory effect of intonation: Eye movements during instructed visual search. Journal of Memory and Language, 58, 541–573.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Järvinen-Pasley, A. M., Peppé, S., King-Smith, G., & Heaton, P. (2008). The relationship between form and function level receptive prosodic abilities in autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 38, 1328–1340.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Johnson, E. K., & Jusczyk, P. W. (2001). Word segmentation by 8-month-olds: When speech cues count more than statistics. Journal of Memory and Language, 44, 548–567.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jolliffe, T.-D., & Baron-Cohen, S. (1999). Linguistic processing in high-functioning adults with autism or Asperger syndrome: Is local coherence impaired? Cognition, 71, 149–185.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jones, C. R., Happé, F., Baird, G., Simonoff, E., Marsden, A. J., Tregay, J., et al. (2009). Auditory discrimination and auditory sensory behaviours in ASDs. Neuropsychologia, 47, 2850–2858.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Joseph, R. M., Tager-Flusberg, H., & Lord, C. (2002). Cognitive profiles and social-communicative functioning in children with autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 43, 807–821.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kanner, L. (1943). Autistic disturbances of affective contact. Nervous Child, 2, 217–250.Google Scholar
Kelley, E., Paul, J., Fein, D., & Naigles, L. (2006). Residual language deficits in children with a history of autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 36, 807–828.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kjelgaard, M. M., & Tager-Flusberg, H. (2001). An investigation of language impairment in autism: Implications for genetic subgroups. Language and Cognitive Processes, 16, 287–308.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kleinman, J., Marciano, P. L., & Ault, R. L. (2001). Advanced theory of mind in high-functioning adults with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 31, 29–36.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Klin, A., Jones, W., Schultz, R., & Volkmar, F. (2003). The enactive mind, or from actions to cognition: Lessons from autism. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Science, 358, 345–360.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kujala, T., Aho, E., Lepistö, T., Jansson-Verkasalo, E., Nieminen-von Wendt, T., von Wendt, L., et al. (2007). Atypical pattern of discriminating sound features in adults with Asperger syndrome as reflected by the mismatch negativity. Biological Psychology, 75, 109–114.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kujala, T., Kuuluvainen, S., Saalasti, S., Jansson-Verkasalo, E., von Wendt, L., & Lepistö, T. (2010). Speech-feature discrimination in children with Asperger syndrome as determined with the multi-feature mismatch negativity paradigm. Clinical Neurophysiology, 121, 1410–1419.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lee, E.-K., & Watson, D. G. (2011). Effects of pitch accents in attachment ambiguity resolution. Language and Cognitive Processes, 26, 262–297.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lepistö, T., Silokallio, S., Nieminen-von Wendt, T., Alku, P., Näätänen, R., & Kujala, T. (2006). Auditory perception and attention as reflected by the brain event-related potentials in children with Asperger syndrome. Clinical Neurophysiology, 117, 2161–2171.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Le Sourn-Bissaoui, S., Caillies, S, Gierski, F., & Motte, J. (2009). Inference processing in adolescents with Asperger syndrome: Relationship with theory of mind abilities. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 3, 797–808.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lopez, B., & Leekam, S. R. (2003). Do children with autism fail to process information in context? Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 44, 285–300.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lord, C., & Paul, R. (1997). Language and communication in autism. In Cohen, D. & Volkmar, F. (Eds.), Handbook of autism and pervasive developmental disorders (pp. 195–225). New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Lord, C., Risi, S., Lambrecht, L., Cook, E. H., Leventhal, B. L., DiLavore, P. C., et al. (2000). Autism diagnostic observational schedule—Generic: A standard measure of social and communication deficits associated with the spectrum of autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 30, 205–223.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lord, C., Risi, S., & Pickles, A. (2004). Trajectory of language development in autism spectrum disorders. In Rice, M. L. & Warren, S. F. (Eds.), Developmental language disorders (pp. 7–30). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Loukusa, S., Leionen, E., Kuusikko, S., Jussila, K., Mattila, M., Ryder, N., et al. (2007). Use of context in pragmatic language comprehension by children with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 37, 1049–1059.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
MacKay, G., & Shaw, A. (2004). A comparative study of figurative language in children with autism spectrum disorder. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 20, 13–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marco, E. J., Hinkley, L. B., Hill, S. S., & Nagarajan, S. S. (2011). Sensory processing in autism: A review of neurophysiologic findings. Pediatric Research, 69, 48R–54R.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Martin, I., & McDonald, S. (2004). An exploration of causes of non-literal language problems in individuals with Asperger syndrome. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 34, 311–328.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mazuka, R., Jincho, N., & Oishi, H. (2009). Development of executive control and language processing. Language and Linguistic Compass, 3, 59–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCaleb, P., & Prizant, B. (1985). Encoding of new versus old information by autistic children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 50, 226–230.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mehler, J., Jusczyk, P. W., Lambertz, G., Halsted, N., Bertoncini, J., & Amiel-Tison, C. (1988). A precursor of language acquisition in young infants. Cognition, 29, 143–178.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Morgan, J. L. (1996). Prosody and the roots of parsing. In Warren, P. (Ed.), Prosody and parsing (pp. 69–106). London: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Nadig, A., & Shaw, H. (2012). Acoustic and perceptual measurement of expressive prosody in high-functioning autism: Increased pitch range and what it means to listeners. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 42, 499–511.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nappa, R., & Snedeker, J. (2012). A surprising contrast: Children with autism spectrum disorders use contrastive stress to identify new referents but not to establish a contrast set. Paper presented at the 37th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD).Google Scholar
Novick, J. M., Trueswell, J. C., & Thompson-Schill, S. L. (2005). Cognitive control and parsing: Re-examining the role of Broca's area in sentence comprehension. Journal of Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience, 5, 263–281.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Connor, K. (2012). Auditory processing in autism spectrum disorder: A review. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 36, 836–854.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ozonoff, S., Cook, I., Coon, H., Dawson, G., Joseph, R. M., Klin, A., et al. (2004). Performance on Cambridge neuropsychological test automated battery subtests sensitive to frontal lobe function in people with autistic disorder: Evidence from the collaborative programs of excellence in autism network. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 34, 139–150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ozonoff, S., Pennington, B., & Rogers, S. (1991). Executive function deficits in high-functioning autistic individuals: Relationship to theory of mind. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 32, 1081–1105.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Paul, R., Augustyn, A., Klin, A., & Volkmar, F. (2005). Perception and production of prosody by speakers with autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 35, 205–220.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Paul, R., Orlovski, S., Marchinko, H., & Volkmar, F. (2009). Conversational behaviors in youth with high-functioning autism and Asperger syndrome. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 39, 115–125.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Peppé, S. (2009). Why is prosody in speech-language pathology so difficult? International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 11, 258–271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peppé, S. J. E., Cleland, J., Gibbon, F. E., O'Hare, A. E., & Martínez-Castilla, P. (2011). Expressive prosody in children with autism spectrum conditions. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 24, 41–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peppé, S., McCann, J., Gibbon, F., O'Hare, A., & Rutherford, M. (2006). Assessing prosodic and pragmatic ability in children with high-functioning autism. Journal of Pragmatics, 38, 1776–1791.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peppé, S., McCann, J., Gibbon, F., O'Hare, A., & Rutherford, M. (2007). Receptive and expressive prosodic ability in children with high-functioning autism. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 50, 1015–1028.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pijnacker, J., Geurts, B., Van Lambalgen, M., Kan, C. C., Buitelaar, J. K., & Hagoort, P. (2009). Defeasible reasoning in high-functioning adults with autism: Evidence for impaired exception-handling. Neuropsychologia, 47, 644–651.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Provonost, W., Wakstein, M., & Wakstein, D. (1966). A longitudinal study of speech behaviors and language comprehension in fourteen children diagnosed as atypical or autistic. Exceptional Children, 33, 19–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russo, N., Flanagan, T., Iarocci, G., Berringer, D., Zelazo, P. D., & Burack, J. A. (2007). Deconstructing executive deficits among persons with autism: Implications for cognitive neuroscience. Brain and Cognition, 65, 77–86.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Russo, N. M., Skoe, E., Trommer, B., Nicol, T., Zecker, S., Bradlow, A., et al. (2008). Deficient brainstem encoding of pitch in children with autism spectrum disorders. Clinical Neurophysiology, 119, 1720–1731.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rutherford, M. D., Baron-Cohen, S., & Wheelwright, S. (2002). Reading the mind in the voice: A study with normal adults and adults with Asperger syndrome and high functioning autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 32, 189–194.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rutter, M., Bailey, A., Berument, S. K., Lord, C., & Pickles, A. (2003). Social Communication Questionnaire (SCQ). Los Angeles: Western Psychological Services.Google Scholar
Rutter, M., Le Couteur, A., & Lord, C. (2003). Autism Diagnostic Interview—Revised. Los Angeles: Western Psychological Services.Google Scholar
Selkirk, E. O. (1986). On derived domains in sentence phonology. Phonology, 3, 371–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Semel, E., Wiig, E. H., & Secord, W. A. (2003). Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (CELF-4). San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation.Google Scholar
Shattuck-Hufnagel, S., & Turk, A. (1996). A prosody tutorial for investigators of auditory sentence processing. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 25, 193–247.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shriberg, L. D., Paul, R., Black, L. M., & van Santen, J. P. H. (2011). The hypothesis of apraxia of speech in children with autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 41, 405–426.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Snedeker, J., & Trueswell, J. (2003). Using prosody to avoid ambiguity: Effects of speaker awareness and referential context. Journal of Memory and Language, 48, 103–130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snedeker, J., & Trueswell, J. (2004). The developing constraints on parsing decisions: The role of lexical-biases and referential scenes in child and adult sentence processing. Cognitive Psychology, 49, 238–299.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Snedeker, J., & Yuan, S. (2008). Effects of prosodic and lexical constraints on parsing in young children (and adults). Journal of Memory and Language, 58, 574–608.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Speer, S. R., & Ito, K. (2009). Prosody in first language acquisition—Acquiring intonation as a tool to organize information in conversation. Language and Linguistics Compass, 3, 90–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tager-Flusberg, H., Paul, R., & Lord, C. (2005). Language and communication in autism. In Volkmar, F. R., Paul, R., Klin, A., & Cohen, D. J. (Eds.), Handbook of autism and pervasive developmental disorders: Diagnosis, development, neurobiology, and behavior (3rd ed., pp. 335–364). New York: Wiley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tanenhaus, M. K., Spivey-Knowlton, M. J., Eberhard, K. M., & Sedivy, J. C. (1995). Integration of visual and linguistic information in spoken language comprehension. Science, 268, 1632–1634.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Thothathiri, M., & Snedeker, J. (2008a). Syntactic priming during language comprehension in three- and four-year-old children. Journal of Memory and Language, 58, 188–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thothathiri, M., & Snedeker, J. (2008b). Give and take: Syntactic priming during spoken language comprehension. Cognition, 108, 51–68.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Trueswell, J. C., Sekerina, I., Hill, N. M., & Logrip, M. L. (1999). The kindergarten-path effect: Studying on-line sentence processing in young children. Cognition, 73, 89–134.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Verte, S., Guerts, H., Roeyers, H., Ooosterlaan, J., & Sergeant, J. (2006). Executive functioning in children with an autism spectrum disorder: Can we differentiate within the spectrum? Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 36, 351–372.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vogel, I., & Raimy, E. (2002). The acquisition of compound vs. phrasal stress: The role of prosodic constituents. Journal of Child Language, 29, 225–250.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wagner, M., & Watson, D. (2010). Experimental and theoretical advances in prosody: A review. Introduction to Special Issue of Language and Cognitive Processes, 25, 905–945.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wechsler, D. (1999). Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence. San Antonio, TX: Pearson.Google Scholar
Weighall, A. (2008). The kindergarten path effect revisited: Children's use of context when processing structural ambiguities. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 99, 75–95.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Young, E. C., Diehl, J. J., Morris, D., Hyman, S. L., & Bennetto, L. (2005). The use of two language tests to identify pragmatic language problems in children with autism spectrum disorders. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 36, 62–72.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed