Verbal/non-verbal asynchrony in adolescents with high-functioning Autism

描述（由申请人提供）：患有高功能自闭症（HFA）的青少年在非语言社交沟通方面存在显着缺陷，这通常会导致抑郁和社交退缩。这些缺陷在他们的加工和生产能力上尤其明显 定性地适当的面部表情。有人认为，语言和非语言言语行为之间缺乏同步可能会大大有助于这种社会尴尬。然而，很少有人注意到接受性和表达性非语言交际之间的相互作用以及它们与语言的整合。在接受领域，来自眼动追踪研究的证据越来越多地表明，HFA参与者在其交流面部表情的扫描路径上有微妙的质的差异。在这一人群中的非语言交流的生产仍然是非常不了解，但初步证据表明，表达是绝对准确的，但定性尴尬和不同步的口头语言比他们的典型发展（TD）的同龄人。在一个高度创新的方法，拟议的项目将量化的面部表情处理和生产的青少年与HFA的质的差异。我们将使用眼动追踪和动作捕捉方法来记录面部表情的产生和处理的客观措施，并将其与TD同龄人记录的尴尬的主观表现联系起来。我们将专门确定一个潜在的口头/非口头同步赤字的青少年HFA这种社会沟通尴尬的贡献。 眼动追踪和动作捕捉数据将与每个参与者的行为测量和诊断严重程度相关。动作捕捉数据也将与天真的TD观察者对尴尬的判断相关联，并将分析表达和接受社会沟通技能及其与口头语言的同步性的定性成分。这项工作的重要性在于建立具体的，可量化的功能之间的关系，非语言交流和社会沟通的成功，每个参与者与HFA，症状的严重程度和定性的TD编码器的看法。我们假设患有HFA的青少年在接受和表达方式中的言语/非言语同步性降低，并且ASD症状严重程度较高的个体在接受和表达任务中表现出更高的同步性。除了记录细粒度的缺陷，我们还将确定是否与HFA的个人能够提高他们的生产，以响应时空线索。我们提出的项目的这一组成部分将最终导致通过创建更明确的干预目标，如语言/非语言同步改善社会沟通干预。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Adolescents with high-functioning autism (HFA) have significant deficits in non-verbal social communication, which often lead to depression and social withdrawal. These deficits are particularly apparent in their ability to process and produce qualitatively appropriate facial expressions. It has been suggested that a lack of synchrony between verbal and non-verbal speech acts may significantly contribute to this social awkwardness. And yet, very little attention has been paid to the interaction between receptive and expressive non-verbal communication and their integration with verbal language. In the receptive domain, evidence from eyetracking studies increasingly shows that participants with HFA have subtle, qualitative differences in their scan paths for communicative facial expressions. Production of non-verbal communication in this population is still very poorly understood, but preliminary evidence points to expressions that are categorically accurate, but qualitatively awkward and less synchronous with verbal language than those of their typically developing (TD) peers. In a highly innovative approach the proposed project will quantify the qualitative differences of facial expression processing and production by adolescents with HFA. We will use eyetracking and motion-capture methodologies to record objective measures of facial expression production and processing and relate them to the subjective appearance of awkwardness recorded by TD peers. We will specifically aim to determine the contribution of an underlying verbal/non-verbal synchrony deficit in adolescents with HFA to this social communication awkwardness. Eyetracking and motion-capture data will be correlated with behavioral measures and diagnostic severity for each participant. Motion-capture data will also be correlated with judgments of awkwardness by na¿ve TD observers and will analyze qualitative components for expressive and receptive social communication skills and their synchrony with verbal language. The importance of this work lies in establishing the relationship between specific, quantifiable features of non-verbal communication and the social communication success of each participant with HFA, as measured by symptom severity and by qualitative perceptions of TD coders. We hypothesize that adolescents with HFA have reduced verbal/non- verbal synchrony in receptive and expressive modalities, and that individuals with higher ASD symptom severity will show increased asynchrony in receptive and expressive tasks. In addition to documenting fine- grained deficits, we will also ascertain whether individuals with HFA are able to improve their productions in response to temporal-spatial cueing. This component of our proposed project will ultimately lead to improved social communication intervention by creating more clearly defined intervention targets, such as verbal/nonverbal synchrony.