Nonlinguistic Vocalizations in Autism: Acoustic Cry Analysis in Early Infancy

描述（由申请人提供）：自闭症与发声和情感信号的中断有关。先前的研究已经确定了自闭症儿童语音和发声的韵律质量的相似性。即使是很小的婴儿，也可以通过测量哭声的韵律来测量发声的非语言方面。从一个生物社会模型，婴儿哭可以被看作是神经生理功能的非特异性指标，并作为服务的重要机会，在生命的最初几个月的二元社会互动。因此，哭泣产生中的重复性可能反映了发声和情感信号的发展中断。到目前为止，很少有系统的研究，对发声的婴儿后来诊断为自闭症，也没有研究尚未调查哭的特点，在这一人群。识别自闭症的非典型哭泣特征将有助于改善识别婴儿期自闭症的努力。这项研究将测量自闭症儿童早期家庭录像带中哭泣的声学特性。我们会透过不同的宣传方法，向自闭症儿童的家长征集家庭录影带。分析将仅限于记录出生后头6个月的婴儿。这些声音样本中包含自发叫声的部分将被选择并分析一系列声学特征。我们将比较自闭症儿童和一组非自闭症婴儿的哭声的声学特征，这些非自闭症婴儿在记录时的年龄以及录像带记录的一般设置特征方面与自闭症婴儿相匹配。我们将利用一个哭分析系统，已被用于广泛的研究，典型和特殊人群。在这项研究中使用的哭声分析系统的一个独特的特点是，它被设计成独特的幼儿声道的质量模型。本研究将对自闭症早期筛查的应用研究以及自闭症沟通和声音信号的起源和发展过程的研究具有启示意义。公共卫生相关性这项研究与自闭症儿童的早期识别和干预高度相关。通过确定与这种疾病相关的婴儿期哭泣的非典型方面，这项研究将有助于开发更敏感和更具体的筛查和诊断工具，用于婴儿期。此外，这项研究将提高我们对自闭症沟通障碍的根源和过程的理解。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Autism is associated with disruptions in vocal production and emotional signaling. Previous research has identified atypicalities in prosodic qualities of speech and vocalizations in children with autism. Such nonverbal aspects of vocal production can be measured in even very young infants through the measurement of the prosodic qualities of cry. From a biosocial model, infant cry can be seen as both a nonspecific indicator of neurophysiologic functioning and as serving important opportunities for dyadic social interaction in the early months of life. Thus, atypicalities in cry production may reflect disruptions in the development of both vocal production and emotional signaling. To date, there has been very little systematic research on vocal production in infants later diagnosed with autism, and no study has yet to investigate cry characteristics in this population. The identification of atypical cry characteristics in autism would help to improve efforts to identify autism in infancy. This study will measure the acoustic properties of cry from early home videotapes in children with autism. Using a variety of means of publicity, we will solicit home videotapes from parents of children with autism spectrum disorders. Analyses will be limited to recording of infants from the first 6 months of life. Portions of these vocal samples that contain spontaneous cries will be selected and analyzed for a range of acoustic characteristics. We will compare the acoustic features of cry from children with autism to a group of non-autistic infants selected to match the autistic infants in terms of age at time of recording as well as general setting characteristics of the videotape recording. We will utilize a cry analysis system that has been used in a wide range of studies of typical and special populations. A unique characteristic of the cry analysis system proposed for use in this study is that it was designed to model the qualities of the vocal tract unique to young infants. This study will have implications for both applied research on early screening, as well as research on the origins and developmental course of communication and vocal signaling in autism. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE This research is highly relevant to both early identification and intervention for children with autism. By identifying atypical aspects of cry in infancy associated with this disorder, this research will aide in the development of more sensitive and specific screening and diagnostic tools for use in infancy. In addition, this research will improve our understanding of the roots and course of communication impairments in autism.