Expressive and Receptive Prosody in Autism

自闭症的表达性和接受性韵律

• 批准号: 7007237
• 负责人: Jan P van Santen
• 金额: $ 55.66万
• 依托单位: OREGON HEALTH & SCIENCE UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2005
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2005-01-10 至 2009-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7007237
• 关键词: autism; biomedical equipment development; children; clinical research; computer assisted instruction; developmental disease /disorder; human subject; learning; neuropsychology; phonology; psychoacoustics; psycholinguistics; speech; verbal behavior

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) form a group of neuropsychiatric conditions whose core behavioral features include impairments in reciprocal social interaction, in communication, and repetitive, stereotyped, or restricted interests and behaviors. The importance of prosodic deficits in the adaptive communicative competence of speakers with ASD, as well as for a fuller understanding of the social disabilities central to these disorders is generally recognized; yet current studies are few in number and have significant methodological limitations. The objective of the proposed project is to detail prosodic deficits in young speakers with ASD through a series of experiments that address these disabilities and related areas of function. Key features of the project include: 1) the application of innovative technology. The study will apply computer-based speech and language technologies for quantifying expressive prosody, for computing dialogue structure, and for generating acoustically controlled speech stimuli for measuring receptive prosody; moreover, all experiments will be delivered via computer to insure consistency of stimuli and accuracy of recording responses; 2) broad coverage of the dimensions of prosody. All three functions of prosody, grammatical, pragmatic, and affective, will be addressed; expressive and receptive tasks are included; and both contextualized tasks (dialogue, story comprehension and memory) and decontextualized tasks (e.g., vocal affect recognition) will be used; 3) inclusion of neuropsychological assessment and classification methodologies to address within-group heterogeneity and obtain a detailed characterization of the groups; 4) inclusion of two comparison groups: children with typical development and those with Developmental Language Disorder; 5) inclusion of an experimental treatment program to enhance the prosodic abilities of speakers with ASD.

描述（由申请人提供）：自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）是一组神经精神疾病，其核心行为特征包括互惠社会互动、沟通障碍，以及重复、刻板或限制的兴趣和行为。韵律缺陷在ASD说话者的适应性交际能力中的重要性，以及对这些障碍的核心社会障碍的更全面的理解，已得到普遍认可；然而，目前的研究数量很少，而且在方法上有很大的局限性。该项目的目标是通过一系列针对这些残疾和相关功能领域的实验，详细描述患有ASD的年轻说话者的韵律缺陷。项目的主要特点包括：1)创新技术的应用。本研究将应用计算机语音和语言技术来量化表达韵律，计算对话结构，并产生声学控制的语音刺激来测量接受韵律；此外，所有实验都将通过计算机进行，以确保刺激的一致性和记录反应的准确性；2)韵律维度的覆盖面广。韵律的三个功能，语法，语用和情感，将被解决；包括表达性和接受性任务；情境化任务（对话、故事理解和记忆）和非情境化任务（例如声音情感识别）都将被使用；3)纳入神经心理学评估和分类方法，以解决组内异质性并获得组的详细特征；4)分为典型发展性语言障碍儿童和发展性语言障碍儿童两组；5)纳入实验性治疗方案，以提高ASD说话者的韵律能力。