Singh Leher, Harrow MariLouise S
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2014 Oct;57(5):1764-78. doi: 10.1044/2014_JSLHR-L-13-0123.
To investigate sensitivity to prosodic and semantic cues to emotion in individuals with high-functioning autism (HFA).
Emotional prosody and semantics were independently manipulated to assess the relative influence of prosody versus semantics on speech processing. A sample of 10-year-old typically developing children (n = 10) and children with HFA (n = 10) were asked to repeat words that were either emotionally congruent or incongruent in form and content (Experiment 1A). In a second task (Experiment 1B), the same participants were asked to classify stimuli on the basis of emotional prosody. A final experiment (Experiment 2) focused on sensitivity to congruence in a non-emotional source of variation: talker gender.
The results revealed a selective impairment in spontaneous integration of prosodic and semantic cues to emotion in HFA; however, the same participants were able to categorize emotions on the basis of prosody under reduced task demands. Individuals with HFA were highly sensitive to another surface characteristic in speech: talker gender.
The study reveals impairment in the spontaneous integration of prosodic and semantic cues to emotion in HFA; however, insensitivity to surface detail, such as prosody, in HFA appears to be highly task dependent and selective to the domain of emotion.
研究高功能自闭症（HFA）个体对情感的韵律和语义线索的敏感性。
分别对情感韵律和语义进行操控，以评估韵律与语义对言语加工的相对影响。选取10名10岁发育正常的儿童（n = 10）和10名HFA儿童作为样本，要求他们重复在形式和内容上情感一致或不一致的单词（实验1A）。在第二项任务中（实验1B），要求相同的参与者根据情感韵律对刺激进行分类。最后一项实验（实验2）聚焦于对非情感变异源——说话者性别一致性的敏感性。
结果显示，HFA个体在自发整合情感的韵律和语义线索方面存在选择性损伤；然而，在任务要求降低的情况下，相同的参与者能够根据韵律对情感进行分类。HFA个体对言语中的另一个表面特征——说话者性别高度敏感。
该研究揭示了HFA个体在自发整合情感的韵律和语义线索方面存在损伤；然而，HFA个体对韵律等表面细节的不敏感似乎高度依赖任务，且对情感领域具有选择性。
