University of Massachusetts Medical School Shriver Center, Waltham, MY, USA.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2010 Jun;53(3):778-93. doi: 10.1044/1092-4388(2009/08-0127).
To investigate the perception and production of lexical stress and processing of affective prosody in adolescents with high-functioning autism (HFA). We hypothesized preserved processing of lexical and affective prosody but atypical lexical prosody production.
Sixteen children with HFA and 15 typically developing (TD) peers participated in 3 experiments that examined the following: (a) perception of affective prosody (Experiment 1), (b) lexical stress perception (Experiment 2), and (c) lexical stress production (Experiment 3). In Experiment 1, participants labeled sad, happy, and neutral spoken sentences that were low-pass filtered, to eliminate verbal content. In Experiment 2, participants disambiguated word meanings based on lexical stress (HOTdog vs. hot DOG). In Experiment 3, participants produced these words in a sentence completion task. Productions were analyzed with acoustic measures.
Accuracy levels showed no group differences. Participants with HFA could determine affect from filtered sentences and disambiguate words on the basis of lexical stress. They produced appropriately differentiated lexical stress patterns but demonstrated atypically long productions, indicating reduced ability in natural prosody production.
Children with HFA were as capable as their TD peers in receptive tasks of lexical stress and affective prosody. Prosody productions were atypically long, despite accurate differentiation of lexical stress patterns. Future research should use larger samples and spontaneous versus elicited productions.
研究高功能自闭症（HFA）青少年对词汇重音的感知和产生以及情感韵律的加工。我们假设对词汇和情感韵律的处理是正常的，但词汇重音的产生是异常的。
16 名 HFA 儿童和 15 名典型发育（TD）同龄人参加了 3 项实验，分别考察了以下内容：（a）情感韵律的感知（实验 1），（b）词汇重音的感知（实验 2）和（c）词汇重音的产生（实验 3）。在实验 1 中，参与者根据情感（悲伤、高兴和中性）对经过低通滤波的句子进行标注，以消除言语内容。在实验 2 中，参与者根据词汇重音（HOTdog 与 hot DOG）来区分单词的含义。在实验 3 中，参与者在句子完成任务中完成这些单词的发音。使用声学测量方法分析发音。
准确率没有显示出组间差异。HFA 参与者能够从过滤后的句子中确定情感，并根据词汇重音来区分单词。他们产生了适当区分的词汇重音模式，但表现出异常长的发音，表明他们在自然韵律产生方面的能力降低。
HFA 儿童在词汇重音和情感韵律的接受性任务中与 TD 同龄人一样有能力。尽管能够准确区分词汇重音模式，但韵律发音过长。未来的研究应该使用更大的样本，并采用自发而非诱发的发音。
