Hong Yitian, Chen Si, Zhou Fang, Chan Angel, Tang Tempo
Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China.
Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, Research Centre for Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China.
Front Psychol. 2023 Jun 19;14:1128976. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1128976. eCollection 2023.
Phonetic entrainment is a phenomenon in which people adjust their phonetic features to approach those of their conversation partner. Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have been reported to show some deficits in entrainment during their interactions with human interlocutors, though deficits in terms of significant differences from typically developing (TD) controls were not always registered. One reason related to the inconsistencies of whether deficits are detected or not in autistic individuals is that the conversation partner's speech could hardly be controlled, and both the participants and the partners might be adjusting their phonetic features. The variabilities in the speech of conversation partners and various social traits exhibited might make the phonetic entrainment (if any) of the participants less detectable. In this study, we attempted to reduce the variability of the interlocutors by employing a social robot and having it do a goal-directed conversation task with children with and without ASD. Fourteen autistic children and 12 TD children participated the current study in their second language English. Results showed that autistic children showed comparable vowel formants and mean fundamental frequency () entrainment as their TD peers, but they did not entrain their range as the TD group did. These findings suggest that autistic children were capable of exhibiting phonetic entrainment behaviors similar to TD children in vowel formants and , particularly in a less complex situation where the speech features and social traits of the interlocutor were controlled. Furthermore, the utilization of a social robot may have increased the interest of these children in phonetic entrainment. On the other hand, entrainment of range was more challenging for these autistic children even in a more controlled situation. This study demonstrates the viability and potential of using human-robot interactions as a novel method to evaluate abilities and deficits in phonetic entrainment in autistic children.
语音趋同是一种人们调整自身语音特征以趋近对话伙伴语音特征的现象。据报道，患有自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的个体在与人类对话者互动时，在语音趋同方面存在一些缺陷，不过与典型发育（TD）对照组相比，这些缺陷并不总是表现出显著差异。自闭症个体中缺陷是否被检测到存在不一致情况，其中一个原因是对话伙伴的语音很难得到控制，参与者和伙伴都可能在调整自身的语音特征。对话伙伴语音的变异性以及所展现出的各种社会特征可能使得参与者的语音趋同（如果存在的话）更难被察觉。在本研究中，我们尝试通过使用社交机器人并让它与患有和未患有ASD的儿童进行目标导向对话任务，来减少对话者的变异性。14名自闭症儿童和12名TD儿童用他们的第二语言英语参与了本研究。结果显示，自闭症儿童在元音共振峰和平均基频（）趋同方面与TD同龄人表现相当，但他们在范围趋同方面不如TD组。这些发现表明，自闭症儿童在元音共振峰和方面能够表现出与TD儿童相似的语音趋同行为，特别是在对话者的语音特征和社会特征得到控制的不太复杂的情境中。此外，社交机器人的使用可能提高了这些儿童对语音趋同的兴趣。另一方面，即使在更可控的情境中，这些自闭症儿童在范围趋同方面也更具挑战性。本研究证明了使用人机交互作为评估自闭症儿童语音趋同能力和缺陷的新方法的可行性和潜力。
