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Purpose: Stories told by autistic narrators often contain relatively frequent use of ambiguous references. However, it remains unclear whether this ambiguity is driven by ambiguous character establishment (e.g., “Once upon a time, she/the girl…”) and/or ambiguous cohesion (e.g., “Two girls lived in a castle. She/The girl…”). In this study, we directly compared rates of each type of ambiguity within and between narratives told by autistic and non-autistic children, to determine which type of ambiguity is relatively more common in narratives told by autistic children. Method: Thirty-three 10- to 17-year-old autistic participants (n = 17) and non-autistic peers (n = 16), who were not statistically different in age, standardized language scores, and IQ scores (p > .8 for all), watched two short animated videos alone and then described the videos' events to two listeners who were openly unfamiliar with the videos. We transcribed video recordings of narratives and coded all referential noun phrases (NPs) as either clear or ambiguous. We further categorized ambiguous NPs as either ineffective introduction or ineffective cohesion. Results: Autistic children produced significantly higher rates of ambiguous establishment than non-autistic peers, whereas between-group comparisons' rates of ambiguous cohesion were not statistically significant. Conclusions: Older children on the autism spectrum show differences in the way they introduce characters, selecting NP types that are only appropriate when their listener is already familiar with the referent. In contrast, once they have introduced characters, they show cohesive skills that are comparable to those of non-autistic peers. Findings support theories arguing that autistic children show differences in their application of social pragmatic principles (listener/context-specific pragmatic rules), whereas their use of linguistic pragmatics (context-independent rules) is similar to that of non-autistic peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: People with high-functioning autism (HFA) have qualitative differences in facial expression and prosody production, which are rarely systematically quantified. The authors' goals were to qualitatively and quantitatively analyze prosody and facial expression productions in children and adolescents with HFA. Method: Participants were 22 male children and adolescents with HFA and 18 typically developing (TD) controls (17 males, 1 female). The authors used a story retelling task to elicit emotionally laden narratives, which were analyzed through the use of acoustic measures and perceptual codes. Naive listeners coded all productions for emotion type, degree of expressiveness, and awkwardness. Results: The group with HFA was not significantly different in accuracy or expressiveness of facial productions, but was significantly more awkward than the TD group. Participants with HFA were significantly more expressive in their vocal productions, with a trend for greater awkwardness. Severity of social communication impairment, as captured by the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS; Lord, Rutter, DiLavore, & Risi, 1999), was correlated with greater vocal and facial awkwardness. Conclusions: Facial and vocal expressions of participants with HFA were as recognizable as those of their TD peers but were qualitatively different, particularly when listeners coded samples with intact dynamic properties. These preliminary data show qualitative differences in nonverbal communication that may have significant negative impact on the social communication success of children and adolescents with HFA. Key Words: autism, facial expressions, prosody, production, social communication, Since the earliest descriptions by Kanner (1968) and Asperger (1944), one of the defining characteristics of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is the production of unusual facial expressions and prosody. Prosody [...]

Purpose: To investigate the perception and production of lexical stress and processing of affective prosodyin adolescents with high-functioning autism (HFA). We hypothesized preserved processing of lexical and affective prosody but atypical lexical prosody production. Method: 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. Results: 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 a typically long productions, indicating reduced ability in natural prosody production. Conclusions: 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. KEY WORDS: autism, prosody, lexical stress, affective prosody, perception, production, Prosody is a suprasegmental device that can best be described as the 'melody' or 'rhythm' of speech. It is a complex vocal signal composed primarily of the pitch, intensity, and [...]