Top

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

08-01-2025 | Original Article

Acquisition of Speech Prosody in a Non-native Tone Language by Children With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorder

Auteurs: Si Chen, Yixin Zhang, Meixuan Li, Bin Li, Shuang Lu, Angel Chan, Haoyan Ge, Tempo Tang, Zhuoming Chen

Gepubliceerd in: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

Abstract

Purpose: Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often show abnormal speech prosody. Tonal languages can pose more difficulties as speakers need to use acoustic cues to make lexical contrasts while encoding the focal function, but the acquisition of speech prosody of non-native languages, especially tonal languages has rarely been investigated. Methods: This study aims to fill in the aforementioned gap by studying prosodic focus-marking in Mandarin by native Cantonese-speaking children with ASD (n = 25), in comparison with their typically developing (TD) peers (n = 20) and native Mandarin-speaking children (n = 20). Natural prosodic marking of different types of focus was elicited by picture-based prompt questions, recorded and analyzed acoustically. Results: The autistic children made use of fewer acoustic cues and produced less evident on-focus expansion in these cues than TD, especially the native-Mandarin speaking peers. They also demonstrated a clear preference to on-focus expansion than to post-focus compression. These children, together with their native Cantonese-speaking peers, also hyper-performed in tone realization, prioritizing lexical prosody over focus marking. Such hyper-performance may further limit their use of prosodic cues in focus marking. However, the difficulties the autistic children faced in the acquisition of speech prosody in a non-native tone language, though found, are not more than those they face in their mother tongue. Conclusion: Multilingual exposure may help the autistic children master the use of some focus marking strategies though they still need interventions to help them to implement their focus-marking knowledge more sufficiently in both native and non-native languages.

American Psychiatric Association Division of Research. (2013). Highlights of changes from DSM-iv to dsm-5: Somatic symptom and related disorders. Focus, 11(4), 525–527. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.focus.11.4.525CrossRef

Asghari, S. Z., Farashi, S., Bashirian, S., & Jenabi, E. (2021). Distinctive prosodic features of people with autism spectrum disorder: A systematic review and meta-analysis study. Scientific Reports, 11(1), 23093. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-02487-6CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Bao, M. (2008). Phonetic realization and perception of prominence among lexical tones in Mandarin Chinese. University of Florida.

Bates, D., Mächler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67, 1–48. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v067.i01CrossRef

Baumann, S. (2006). Information structure and prosody: Linguistic categories for spoken language annotation. Methods in Empirical Prosody Research, 3, 153–180. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110914641CrossRef

Boersma, P., & Weenink, D. (2023). Praat:Praat: Doing phonetics by computer [Computer program]. (6.3.08) [Computer software]. http://www.praat.org/

Brown, R. (1973). A first language: The early stages. Harvard University.CrossRef

Cao, W. (2004). A preliminary analysis of focus and ending in Chinese intonation. In Speech Prosody 2004, International Conference.

Chen, H. C., Szendrői, K., Crain, S., & Höhle, B. (2019). Understanding prosodic focus marking in Mandarin Chinese: Data from children and adults. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 48, 19–32. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-018-9580-9CrossRefPubMed

Chen, S., Zhang, Y., Zhou, F., Chan, A., Li, B., Li, B., Tang, T., Chun, E., & Chen, Z. (2024). Focus-marking in a tonal language: Prosodic differences between Cantonese-speaking children with and without autism spectrum disorder. PLoS ONE, 19(7), e0306272.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Chen, Y., & Gussenhoven, C. (2008). Emphasis and tonal implementation in Standard Chinese. Journal of Phonetics, 36(4), 724–746. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2008.06.003CrossRef

Cooper, W. E., Eady, S. J., & Mueller, P. R. (1985). Acoustical aspects of contrastive stress in question–answer contexts. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 77(6), 2142–2156.CrossRefPubMed

Diehl, J. J., & Paul, R. (2009). The assessment and treatment of prosodic disorders and neurological theories of prosody. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 11(4), 287–292. https://doi.org/10.1080/17549500902971887CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Diehl, J. J., & Paul, R. (2013). Acoustic and perceptual measurements of prosody production on the profiling elements of prosodic systems in children by children with autism spectrum disorders. Applied Psycholinguistics, 34(1), 135–161. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0142716411000646CrossRef

Diehl, J. J., & Paul, R. (2012). Acoustic differences in the imitation of prosodic patterns in children with autism spectrum disorders. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 6(1), 123–134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2011.03.012CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Féry, C., & Kügler, F. (2008). Pitch accent scaling on given, new and focused constituents in German. Journal of Phonetics, 36(4), 680–703. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2008.05.001CrossRef

Flynn, S., Foley, C., & Vinnitskaya, I. (2004). The cumulative-enhancement model for language acquisition: Comparing adults’ and children’s patterns of development in first, second and third language acquisition of relative clauses. International Journal of Multilingualism, 1(1), 3–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/14790710408668175CrossRef

Fung, H. S. H., & Mok, P. P. K. (2018). Temporal coordination between focus prosody and pointing gestures in Cantonese. Journal of Phonetics, 71, 113–125. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2018.07.006CrossRef

Fusaroli, R., Lambrechts, A., Bang, D., Bowler, D. M., & Gaigg, S. B. (2017). Is voice a marker for Autism spectrum disorder? A systematic review and meta-analysis. Autism Research, 10(3), 384–407. https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.1678CrossRefPubMed

Gagnon, D., Zeribi, A., Douard, É., Courchesne, V., Rodríguez-Herreros, B., Huguet, G., & Mottron, L. (2021). Bayonet-shaped language development in autism with regression: A retrospective study. Molecular Autism, 12(1), 35. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13229-021-00444-8CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Ge, H., Lee, A. K. L., Yuen, H. K., Liu, F., & Yip, V. (2024). Bilingual exposure might enhance L1 development in Cantonese-English bilingual autistic children: Evidence from the production of focus. Autism, 28(7), 1795–1808. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613231207449CrossRef

Gernsbacher, M. A., Morson, E. M., & Grace, E. J. (2016). Language and speech in autism. Annual Review of Linguistics, 2, 413–425. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-linguist-030514-124824CrossRefPubMed

Gilhuber, C. S., Raulston, T. J., & Galley, K. (2023). Language and communication skills in multilingual children on the autism spectrum: A systematic review. Autism, 27(6), 1516–1531. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613221147780CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Gussenhoven, C., & Chen, A. (Eds.). (2021). The Oxford handbook of language prosody. Oxford University Press.

Halliday, M. A. K. (1967). Notes on transitivity and theme in English: Part 2. Journal of Linguistics, 3(2), 199–244. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226700016613CrossRef

Hsu, Y. Y., Xu, A., & Ngai, H. (2018). Focus prosody in Cantonese and Teochew noun phrases. Proceedings Speech Prosody, 2018, 961–965.

Hubbard, D. J., Faso, D. J., Assmann, P. F., & Sasson, N. J. (2017). Production and perception of emotional prosody by adults with autism spectrum disorder. Autism Research, 10(12), 1991–2001. https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.1847CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Ishihara, S. (2011). Japanese focus prosody revisited: Freeing focus from prosodic phrasing. Lingua, 121(13), 1870–1889. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2011.06.008CrossRef

Jangjamras, J. (2011). Perception and production of English lexical stress by Thai speakers. University of Florida.

Kanner, L. (1946). Irrelevant and metaphorical language in early infantile autism. American Journal of Psychiatry, 103(2), 242–246.CrossRefPubMed

Ladd, D. R. (2008). Intonational phonology (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511808814CrossRef

Lambrecht, K. (1994). Information structure and sentence form: Topics, focus, and the mental representations of discourse referents (pp. xvi, 388). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511620607CrossRef

Lau, J. C., Losh, M., & Speights, M. (2023). Differences in speech articulatory timing and associations with pragmatic language ability in autism. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 102, 102118. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2023.102118CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Lee, C. K. C. & Barnes, J. (2023). Contour shape and prosodic focus marking: The case of Hong Kong Cantonese. In ICPhS (pp. 1300–1304).

Lee, Y. C., Wang, T., & Liberman, M. (2016). Production and perception of tone 3 focus in Mandarin Chinese. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 175546. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01058CrossRef

Lenth, R. V., Buerkner, P., Giné-Vázquez, I., Herve, M., Jung, M., Love, J., Miguez, F., Riebl, H., & Singmann, H. (2023). emmeans: Estimated Marginal Means, aka Least-Squares Means (1.8.4-1) [Computer software]. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=emmeans

Lindblom, B. (1990). Explaining phonetic variation: A sketch of the H&H theory. Speech production and speech modelling (pp. 403–439). Springer.CrossRef

Liu, L. Z. H., Chen, A., & Van de Velde, H. (2016). Prosodic focus marking in minority L1 Bai-children learning Mandarin Chinese as L2. In Proceedings of the 40th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development.

Liu, J., Xu, Y., & Lee, Y. C. (2019). Post-focus compression is not automatically transferred from Korean to L2 English. Phonetics and Speech Sciences, 11(2), 15–21. https://doi.org/10.13064/KSSS.2019.11.2.015CrossRef

Lloyd-Fox, S., Blasi, A., Elwell, C. E., Charman, T., Murphy, D., & Johnson, M. H. (2013). Reduced neural sensitivity to social stimuli in infants at risk for autism. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 280(1758), 20123026. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2012.3026CrossRefPubMedCentral

Lord, C., Brugha, T. S., Charman, T., Cusack, J., Dumas, G., Frazier, T., Jones, E. J., Jones, R. M., Pickles, A., State, M. W., & Taylor, J. L. (2020). Autism spectrum disorder. Nature Reviews Disease Primers, 6(1), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41572-019-0138-4CrossRef

Lord, C., Rutter, M., Goode, S., Heemsbergen, J., Jordan, H., Mawhood, L., & Schopler, E. (2012). Autism diagnostic observation schedule. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

Man, C. H. V. (2000). An acoustic study of the effects of sentential focus on Cantonese tones. (Master dissertation, University of Victoria).

Nadig, A., & Shaw, H. (2015). Acoustic marking of prominence: How do preadolescent speakers with and without high-functioning autism mark contrast in an interactive task? Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 30(1–2), 32–47. https://doi.org/10.1080/01690965.2012.753150CrossRef

Ouyang, I. C., & Kaiser, E. (2015). Prosody and information structure in a tone language: An investigation of Mandarin Chinese. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 30(1–2), 57–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/01690965.2013.805795CrossRef

Paterson, K. B., Liversedge, S. P., White, D., Filik, R., & Jaz, K. (2006). Children’s interpretation of ambiguous focus in sentences with" only". Language Acquisition, 13(3), 253–284. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327817la1303_4CrossRef

Paul, R., Chawarska, K., Cicchetti, D., & Volkmar, F. (2008). Language outcomes of toddlers with autism spectrum disorders: A two year follow-up. Autism Research, 1(2), 97–107. https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.12CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Peppé, S., & McCann, J. (2003). Assessing intonation and prosody in children with atypical language development: The PEPS-C test and the revised version. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 17(4–5), 345–354. https://doi.org/10.1080/0269920031000079994CrossRef

Prévost, P., & Tuller, L. (2022). Bilingual language development in autism. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 12(1), 1–32. https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.21018.preCrossRef

R Core Team. (2024). R: A language and environment for statistical computing [Computer software]. https://www.R-project.org

Raven, J. (2003). Raven progressive matrices. Handbook of nonverbal assessment (pp. 223–237). Springer.

Schneider, W., Eschman, A., & Zuccolotto, A. (2002). E-Prime (Version 2.0). [Computer software and manual]. Psychology Software Tools Inc.

Slabakova, R. (2017). The scalpel model of third language acquisition. International Journal of Bilingualism, 21(6), 651–665. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367006916655413CrossRef

Stein-Smith, K. (2016). The role of multilingualism in effectively addressing global issues: The sustainable development goals and beyond. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 6(12), 2254. https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.0612.03CrossRef

Szendrői, K., Bernard, C., Berger, F., Gervain, J., & Höhle, B. (2018). Acquisition of prosodic focus marking by English, French, and German three-, four-, five-and six-year-olds. Journal of Child Language, 45(1), 219–241. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000917000071CrossRefPubMed

Wang, B. X., Chen, S., Zhou, F., Liu, J., Xiao, C., Chan, A., & Tang, T. (2024). English prosodic focus marking by Cantonese trilingual children with and without autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. https://doi.org/10.1044/2023_JSLHR-23-00508CrossRefPubMed

Wehrle, S. (2021). A multi-dimensional analysis of conversation and intonation in autism spectrum disorder. University of Cologne.

Wu, W. L., & Xu, Y. (2010). Prosodic focus in Hong Kong Cantonese without post-focus compression. In Speech prosody 2010-fifth international conference.

Xu, Y. (1999). Effects of tone and focus on the formation and alignment of f0contours. Journal of Phonetics, 27(1), 55–105. https://doi.org/10.1006/jpho.1999.0086CrossRef

Xu, Y. (2011). Speech prosody: A methodological review. Journal of Speech Sciences, 1(1), 85–115. https://doi.org/10.20396/joss.v1i1.15014CrossRef

Xu, Y. (2013). ProsodyPro—a tool for large-scale systematic prosody analysis. Tools and Resources for the Analysis of Speech Prosody, pp. 7–10. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ProsodyPro-%E2%80%94-A-Tool-for-Large-scale-Systematic-Xu/453480b67a15cac4ec47b52c3a2eea241c18db64

Xu, Y., Chen, S. W., & Wang, B. (2012). Prosodic focus with and without post-focus compression: A typological divide within the same language family? The Linguistic Review, 29(1), 131–147.CrossRef

Xu, Y., & Shen, C. (2016). Prosodic focus with post-focus compression in Lan-yin Mandarin. International Speech Communication Association (ISCA).

Yang, A., & Chen, A. (2018). The developmental path to adult-like prosodic focus-marking in Mandarin Chinese-speaking children. First Language, 38(1), 26–46. https://doi.org/10.1177/0142723717733920CrossRefPubMed

Zhang, X., & Wang, B. (2016). Production and perception of focus in L2 Mandarin of Qiang speakers. In 2016 10th International Symposium on Chinese Spoken Language Processing (ISCSLP) (pp. 1–5). IEEE.

Zhou, P., Crain, S., & Zhan, L. (2012). Sometimes children are as good as adults: The pragmatic use of prosody in children’s on-line sentence processing. Journal of Memory and Language, 67(1), 149–164. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2012.03.005CrossRef

Titel: Acquisition of Speech Prosody in a Non-native Tone Language by Children With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorder
Auteurs: Si Chen
Yixin Zhang
Meixuan Li
Bin Li
Shuang Lu
Angel Chan
Haoyan Ge
Tempo Tang
Zhuoming Chen
Publicatiedatum: 08-01-2025
Uitgeverij: Springer US
Gepubliceerd in: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders
Print ISSN: 0162-3257
Elektronisch ISSN: 1573-3432
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-024-06698-4

Bohn Stafleu van Loghum

Welkom bij Erasmus MC & Bohn Stafleu van Loghum

Registreer

Login

Acquisition of Speech Prosody in a Non-native Tone Language by Children With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

Bohn Stafleu van Loghum

Welkom bij Erasmus MC & Bohn Stafleu van Loghum

Registreer

Login

Deel dit onderdeel of sectie (kopieer de link)

Abstract

Log in om toegang te krijgen