STUDIES OF SOCIAL COMMUNICATION IN SPEAKERS WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER

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Project III The proposed study will examine two components of social communication in speakers with autism: conversational pragmatics, especially as these are impacted by the presence of narrow interests; and production and perception of prosody. These skills will be examined in a cross-sectional design at two developmental levels: preadolescence and adolescence, and will contrast performance among speakers at all points on the Autism Spectrum Disorder with typical development. The studies grow out of our on-going interest in social communication and its manifestation in people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) with high levels of intellectual and linguistic ability, but significant impairment in the capacity to achieve social interaction. Study 1 examines in depth the ability to produce appropriate speech acts in a structured conversation, using a scripted, naturalistic interactive protocol that is designed to elicit specific speech acts and yields a quantitative measure of conversational skill. In addition to observing whether or not the target speech acts are produced, the protocol also uses a dynamic assessment format to provide a sequenced hierarchy of prompts, and rates the level of prompt needed to elicit acts that do not occur spontaneously. An additional aspect of the protocol is the assessment of impact of narrow interests on pragmatic performance. Performance on this protocol will be compared to a rating of pragmatic skills in an unstructured peer interaction. This study has the potential to yield a standard quantitative, validated measure of pragmatic competence for use in clinical settings to evaluate pragmatic ability and measure change in treatment. Study 2 extends our work on the role of prosody in social communication deficits in ASD. We propose to use a newly available measure of prosody, normed on typical children, to assess 3 levels of prosodic function -- grammatical, pragmatic, and affective- in subjects with ASD. This study will also include fMRI work using the receptive prosody tasks. Patterns of prosodic production, and their change over the two developmental periods in the study, will also be examined, using both clinical and speech technology methods. These data will be help to elucidate the relations between prosodic perception and production, identify prevalence and patterns of prosodic deficits within ASD, and lead toward the development of intervention approaches to address these deficits.