Horie Mayumi, Okamura Hitoshi
Graduate School of Biomedical & Health Sciences, Hiroshima University, Japan; Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Faculty of Health and Welfare, Prefectural University of Hiroshima, Japan.
Graduate School of Biomedical & Health Sciences, Hiroshima University, Japan.
Brain Dev. 2017 Nov;39(10):836-845. doi: 10.1016/j.braindev.2017.07.001. Epub 2017 Jul 31.
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.
Phrases routinely used by children were employed in the task administered to the children, with the prosody of the voice speaking these phrases changed to express the four emotions (acceptance, rejection, bluff and fooling).
The percentage of children with ASD who could correctly identify the emotion of "fooling" was significantly lower than that of TDC, at each developmental age (corresponding to middle kindergarten class to sixth year of elementary school). On the other hand, in the children with ADHD, while the correct answer rate for identifying the emotion of "fooling" was significantly lower than that in the TDC and higher than that in the ASD children at development ages corresponding to the early years of elementary school, it did not differ significantly from that in the TDC and was higher than that ASD children at development ages corresponding to the later years of elementary school.
These results indicate that children with ASD find it particularly difficult to understand the emotion of fooling by listening to speech with discrepancy between the meaning of the phrases and the emotion expressed by the voice, although the prosody of the voice may serve as a key to understanding the emotion of the speakers. This finding also suggests that the prosody of the voice expressing this emotion (fooling) may be used for objective evaluation of children with ASD.
我们试图通过将125名患有自闭症谱系障碍的学龄前和学龄儿童（自闭症谱系障碍儿童）与119名发育正常的儿童（发育正常儿童）以及51名年龄匹配的患有注意力缺陷多动障碍的儿童（注意力缺陷多动障碍儿童）进行比较，来评估他们利用语音韵律理解与他们交谈者意图的能力，并基于这些结果探索一种在儿童早期和后期客观评估自闭症谱系障碍儿童的方法。
在对儿童进行的任务中使用儿童日常使用的短语，改变说出这些短语的语音韵律以表达四种情绪（接受、拒绝、虚张声势和愚弄）。
在每个发育年龄（相当于中班幼儿园到小学六年级），自闭症谱系障碍儿童能够正确识别“愚弄”情绪的百分比显著低于发育正常儿童。另一方面，在注意力缺陷多动障碍儿童中，在相当于小学低年级的发育年龄，识别“愚弄”情绪的正确回答率显著低于发育正常儿童且高于自闭症谱系障碍儿童，但在相当于小学高年级的发育年龄，其与发育正常儿童没有显著差异且高于自闭症谱系障碍儿童。
这些结果表明，尽管语音韵律可能是理解说话者情绪的关键，但自闭症谱系障碍儿童通过倾听短语含义与语音表达的情绪之间存在差异的言语来理解愚弄情绪特别困难。这一发现还表明，表达这种情绪（愚弄）的语音韵律可用于对自闭症谱系障碍儿童的客观评估。
