Perception and Acoustic Features of Speech of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

摘要

The goal of our study is to reveal verbal and non-verbal information in speech features of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). 30 children with ASD aged 5-14 years and 160 typically developing (TD) coevals were participants in the study. ASD participants were divided into groups according to the presence of development reversals (ASD-1) and developmental risk diagnosed at the birth (ASD-2). The listeners (n = 220 adults) recognized the word's meaning, correspondence of the repetition word's meaning and intonation contour to the sample, age, and gender of ASD child's speech with less probability vs. TD children. Perception data are confirmed by acoustic features. We found significant differences in pitch values, vowels formants frequency and energy between ASD groups and between ASD and TD in spontaneous speech and repetition words. Pitch values of stress vowels were significantly higher in spontaneous speech vs. repetition words for ASD-1 children, ASD-2, and TD children aged 7-12 years. Pitch values in the spontaneous speech of the ASD-1 were higher than in the ASD-2 children. The coarticulation effect was shown for ASD and TD repetition words. Age dynamic of ASD children acoustic features indicated mastering of clear articulation.