Arciuli Joanne, Paul Rhea
Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2012;65(7):1288-95. doi: 10.1080/17470218.2012.655700. Epub 2012 Mar 15.
Lexical stress refers to the opposition of strong and weak syllables within polysyllabic words and is a core feature of the English prosodic system. There are probabilistic cues to lexical stress present in English orthography. For example, most disyllabic English words ending with the letters "-ure" have first-syllable stress (e.g., "pasture", but note words such as "endure"), whereas most ending with "-ose" have second-syllable stress (e.g., "propose", but note examples such as "glucose"). Adult native speakers of English are sensitive to these probabilities during silent reading. During testing, they tend to assign first-syllable stress when reading a nonword such as "lenture" but second-syllable stress when reading "fostpose" (Arciuli & Cupples, 2006 ). Difficulties with prosody, including problems processing lexical stress, are a notable feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The current study investigated the ability of adolescents with ASD (13-17 years of age) to show this sensitivity compared with a group of typically developing peers. Results indicated reduced sensitivity to probabilistic cues to lexical stress in the group with ASD. The implications of these findings are discussed.
词汇重音指多音节单词中强弱音节的对立，是英语韵律系统的核心特征。英语拼写中存在词汇重音的概率线索。例如，大多数以字母“-ure”结尾的双音节英语单词，重音在第一个音节（如“pasture”，但注意像“endure”这样的词），而大多数以“-ose”结尾的单词，重音在第二个音节（如“propose”，但注意像“glucose”这样的例子）。以英语为母语的成年者在默读时对这些概率很敏感。在测试中，他们读“lenture”这样的非单词时倾向于赋予第一个音节重音，而读“fostpose”时倾向于赋予第二个音节重音（阿尔丘利和卡普尔斯，2006）。韵律方面的困难，包括处理词汇重音的问题，是自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的一个显著特征。本研究调查了患有ASD的青少年（13至17岁）与一组发育正常的同龄人相比，表现出这种敏感性的能力。结果表明，患有ASD的组对词汇重音概率线索的敏感性降低。讨论了这些发现的意义。
