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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 [...]

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2007.01065.x Byline: Julia Parish-Morris (1), Elizabeth A. Hennon (2), Kathy Hirsh-Pasek (3), Roberta Michnick Golinkoff (4), Helen Tager-Flusberg (5) Abstract: To what extent do children with autism (AD) versus typically developing children (TD) rely on attentional and intentional cues to learn words? Four experiments compared 17 AD children (M age = 5.08 years) with 17 language- and 17 mental-age-matched TD children (M ages = 2.57 and 3.12 years, respectively) on nonverbal enactment and word-learning tasks. Results revealed variability in all groups, but particularly within the AD group. Performance on intention tasks was the most powerful predictor of vocabulary in the AD group but not in the TD groups. These findings suggest that word learning cannot be explained exclusively by either attentional or intentional processes, and they provide evidence of a special role for intentional understanding in the vocabulary development of AD children. Author Affiliation: (1)Temple University (2)University of Evansville (3)Temple University (4)University of Delaware (5)Boston University School of Medicine Article note: Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Julia Parish-Morris, Department of Psychology, Weiss Hall, 1701 North 13th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19122-6085. Electronic mail may be sent to jparish@temple.edu.

Purpose: The purpose of this introduction is to provide an overview of the articles contained within this research forum of JSLHR. Each of these articles is based upon presentations from the 2017 ASHA Research Symposium., This research forum contains papers from the 2017 Research Symposium at the ASHA Convention held in Los Angeles, California.The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) has been offering a research symposium at [...]

We examined the communicative intentions behind parents' deictic gesture use with high-risk infants later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; n = 17), high-risk infants who were not diagnosed with ASD (n = 25), and low-risk infants (n = 28) at 12 months and assessed the extent to which the parental deictic gesture intentions predicted infants' later vocabulary development. We found that parents in the three groups produced similar numbers of declarative and imperative gestures during a 10-minute parent–child interaction in the lab at 12 months and that 12-month parental declarative gesture use was significantly, positively associated with children's 36-month vocabulary scores. Encouraging parental use of declarative gestures with infants could have important implications for language development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Differences in face processing in individuals with ASD is hypothesized to impact the development of social communication skills. This study aimed to characterize the neural correlates of face processing in 12-month-old infants at familial risk of developing ASD by (1) comparing face-sensitive event-related potentials (ERP) (Nc, N290, P400) between high-familial-risk infants who develop ASD (HR-ASD), high-familial-risk infants without ASD (HR-NoASD), and low-familial-risk infants (LR), and (2) evaluating how face-sensitive ERP components are associated with development of social communication skills. Methods: 12-month-old infants participated in a study in which they were presented with alternating images of their mother's face and the face of a stranger (LR = 45, HR-NoASD = 41, HR-ASD = 24) as EEG data were collected. Parent-reported and laboratory-observed social communication measures were obtained at 12 and 18 months. Group differences in ERP responses were evaluated using ANOVA, and multiple linear regressions were conducted with maternal education and outcome groups as covariates to assess relationships between ERP and behavioral measures. Results: For each of the ERP components (Nc [negative-central], N290, and P400), the amplitude difference between mother and stranger (Mother-Stranger) trials was not statistically different between the three outcome groups (Nc p = 0.72, N290 p = 0.88, P400 p = 0.91). Marginal effects analyses found that within the LR group, a greater Nc Mother-Stranger response was associated with better expressive language skills on the Mullen Scales of Early Learning, controlling for maternal education and outcome group effects (marginal effects dy/dx = 1.15; p < 0.01). No significant associations were observed between the Nc and language or social measures in HR-NoASD or HR-ASD groups. In contrast, specific to the HR-ASD group, amplitude difference between the Mother versus Stranger P400 response was positively associated with expressive (dy/dx = 2.1, p < 0.001) and receptive language skills at 12 months (dy/dx = 1.68, p < 0.005), and negatively associated with social affect scores on the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (dy/dx = − 1.22, p < 0.001) at 18 months. Conclusions: In 12-month-old infant siblings with subsequent ASD, increased P400 response to Mother over Stranger faces is positively associated with concurrent language and future social skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language samples are a key component in bilingual language assessment (e.g., [4]), although, to date, the emphasis has been on narratives. Our research on non-autistic bilingual children, including those at risk for language impairment, found relationships between cognitive control and language control ([8]), processing of code-switching ([9]), and experience in dual-language contexts ([5]). Although the Adaptive Control Hypothesis does not directly address theory of mind, dual-language contexts may also build awareness of others' language knowledge. [Extracted from the article]

This study tested the hypothesis that Williams syndrome, a rare genetic neurodevelopmental disorder with an unusual cognitive phenotype, involves spared abilities in the domain of understanding other minds. A group of retarded adults with Williams syndrome was compared to an age-, IQ-, and language-matched group of adults with Prader-Willi syndrome, another genetic disorder without the cognitive characteristics of Williams syndrome, and a group of age-matched normal adults, on a task that taps mentalizing ability. The task involved selecting the correct labels to match photographs of complex mental state expressions in the eye region of the face. The adults with Williams syndrome performed significantly better than the adults with Prader-Willi on this task, and about half the group performed in the same range as the normal adults. These findings are consistent with anecdotal evidence about Williams syndrome and provide evidence that mentalizing is a distinct cognitive domain. This spared cognitive capacity may be linked to the relative sparing of limbic-cerebellar neural substrate in Williams syndrome, which is also connected to cortico-frontal regions that are known to be involved in understanding complex mental states., INTRODUCTION Individuals with Williams syndrome have a unique cognitive-behavioral phenotype that includes relative sparing in the domains of language and face processing in the presence of marked deficits in visual-spatial [...]