Perception and adaptation of receptive prosody in autistic adolescents
Abstract A fundamental aspect of language processing is inferring others’ minds from subtle variations in speech. The same word or sentence can often convey different meanings depending on its tempo, timing, and intonation–features often referred to as prosody. Although autistic children and adults...
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Nature Portfolio
2024-07-01
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| Series: | Scientific Reports |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-66569-x |
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| author | Chigusa Kurumada Rachel Rivera Paul Allen Loisa Bennetto |
| author_facet | Chigusa Kurumada Rachel Rivera Paul Allen Loisa Bennetto |
| author_sort | Chigusa Kurumada |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Abstract A fundamental aspect of language processing is inferring others’ minds from subtle variations in speech. The same word or sentence can often convey different meanings depending on its tempo, timing, and intonation–features often referred to as prosody. Although autistic children and adults are known to experience difficulty in making such inferences, the science remains unclear as to why. We hypothesize that detail-oriented perception in autism may interfere with the inference process if it lacks the adaptivity required to cope with the variability ubiquitous in human speech. Using a novel prosodic continuum that shifts the sentence meaning gradiently from a statement (e.g., “It’s raining”) to a question (e.g., “It’s raining?”), we have investigated the perception and adaptation of receptive prosody in autistic adolescents and two groups of non-autistic controls. Autistic adolescents showed attenuated adaptivity in categorizing prosody, whereas they were equivalent to controls in terms of discrimination accuracy. Combined with recent findings in segmental (e.g., phoneme) recognition, the current results provide the basis for an emerging research framework for attenuated flexibility and reduced influence of contextual feedback as a possible source of deficits that hinder linguistic and social communication in autism. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-82af227fcb994e8d8f7616092a99a832 |
| institution | OA Journals |
| issn | 2045-2322 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2024-07-01 |
| publisher | Nature Portfolio |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Scientific Reports |
| spelling | doaj-art-82af227fcb994e8d8f7616092a99a8322025-08-20T02:20:06ZengNature PortfolioScientific Reports2045-23222024-07-0114111110.1038/s41598-024-66569-xPerception and adaptation of receptive prosody in autistic adolescentsChigusa Kurumada0Rachel Rivera1Paul Allen2Loisa Bennetto3Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of RochesterPsychology, University of RochesterPsychology, University of RochesterPsychology, University of RochesterAbstract A fundamental aspect of language processing is inferring others’ minds from subtle variations in speech. The same word or sentence can often convey different meanings depending on its tempo, timing, and intonation–features often referred to as prosody. Although autistic children and adults are known to experience difficulty in making such inferences, the science remains unclear as to why. We hypothesize that detail-oriented perception in autism may interfere with the inference process if it lacks the adaptivity required to cope with the variability ubiquitous in human speech. Using a novel prosodic continuum that shifts the sentence meaning gradiently from a statement (e.g., “It’s raining”) to a question (e.g., “It’s raining?”), we have investigated the perception and adaptation of receptive prosody in autistic adolescents and two groups of non-autistic controls. Autistic adolescents showed attenuated adaptivity in categorizing prosody, whereas they were equivalent to controls in terms of discrimination accuracy. Combined with recent findings in segmental (e.g., phoneme) recognition, the current results provide the basis for an emerging research framework for attenuated flexibility and reduced influence of contextual feedback as a possible source of deficits that hinder linguistic and social communication in autism.https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-66569-x |
| spellingShingle | Chigusa Kurumada Rachel Rivera Paul Allen Loisa Bennetto Perception and adaptation of receptive prosody in autistic adolescents Scientific Reports |
| title | Perception and adaptation of receptive prosody in autistic adolescents |
| title_full | Perception and adaptation of receptive prosody in autistic adolescents |
| title_fullStr | Perception and adaptation of receptive prosody in autistic adolescents |
| title_full_unstemmed | Perception and adaptation of receptive prosody in autistic adolescents |
| title_short | Perception and adaptation of receptive prosody in autistic adolescents |
| title_sort | perception and adaptation of receptive prosody in autistic adolescents |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-66569-x |
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