An Examination of Articulatory Precision in Autistic Children and Adults.
An Examination of Articulatory Precision in Autistic Children and Adults.
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DOI：
10.1044/2021_jslhr-21-00490
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发表时间：
2022-03
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Camille J. Wynn;Elizabeth R Josephson;S. Borrie
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作者：
Camille J. Wynn;Elizabeth R Josephson;S. Borrie
目的根据言语调谐框架，自闭症患者缺乏将其言语“调整”到与神经正常同龄人相同的精确度的能力和/或动机。然而，之前探索自闭症患者的发音模式的研究得出了不同的结果。存在对比结论的原因之一可能是因为研究依赖于表达的感知测量。在这里，我们使用客观的声学测量发音精度来探索自闭症儿童和成人的发音模式。方法 这是对现有语料库的 900 个录制语音样本进行回顾性分析，这些样本取自两个不同人群的 30 名成人和 30 名儿童参与者：自闭症个体（自闭症谱系障碍 [ASD] 组）和神经典型个体（神经典型 [NT] 组）。使用自动指标计算发音精度分数，该指标将观察到的声学效果与每个音素产生的预期声学效果进行比较。使用线性混合效应模型来比较不同人群（即 ASD 组与 NT 组）的发音精度得分，并观察这些差异是否受到年龄组（即儿童与成人）的调节。结果 与神经正常同龄人相比，自闭症患者的言语特点是发音精确度较低。这种模式并没有因年龄而显着减弱，表明它发生在儿童和成人组中。结论 我们的初步研究结果表明，发音不精确可能是自闭症患者童年和成年时期言语的一个特征。这些发现与语音协调框架的预测一致。鉴于目前该临床人群缺乏言语标记以及言语质量在自闭症个体社会融入中的重要性，我们的研究结果将提高发音精度作为未来研究的可行且重要的目标。
PURPOSE According to the speech attunement framework, autistic individuals lack the ability and/or motivation to "tune up" their speech to the same level of precision as their neurotypical peers. However, previous studies exploring the articulatory patterns of autistic individuals have yielded disparate findings. One reason contrasting conclusions exist may be because studies have relied on perceptual measures of articulation. Here, we use an objective acoustic measure of articulatory precision to explore the articulatory patterns of autistic children and adults. METHOD This was a retrospective analysis of an existing corpus of 900 recorded speech samples taken from 30 adult and 30 child participants across two different population groups: autistic individuals (autism spectrum disorder [ASD] group) and neurotypical individuals (neurotypical [NT] group). Articulatory precision scores were calculated using an automated metric that compares observed acoustics to the expected acoustics for each phoneme production. Linear mixed-effects models were used to compare the articulatory precision scores across population group (i.e., ASD group vs. NT group) and to see if these differences were moderated by age group (i.e., children vs. adult). RESULTS The speech of autistic individuals was characterized by reduced articulatory precision relative to their neurotypical peers. This pattern was not significantly moderated by age, indicating it occurred in both the children and adult groups. CONCLUSIONS Our preliminary findings indicate that imprecise articulation may be a characteristic of the speech of autistic individuals in both childhood and adulthood. These findings are in line with predictions posited by the speech attunement framework. Given the current lack of speech markers for this clinical population and the importance of speech quality in the social integration of autistic individuals, our results advance articulatory precision as a viable and important target for future research.