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JSLHR
Research Article
The Psychologist as an Interlocutor in
Autism Spectrum Disorder Assessment:
Insights From a Study of
Spontaneous Prosody
Daniel Bone,
a
Chi-Chun Lee,
a
Matthew P. Black,
a
Marian E. Williams,
b
Sungbok Lee,
a
Pat Levitt,
c,d
and Shrikanth Narayanan
a
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine
relationships between prosodic speech cues and autism
spectrum disorder (ASD) severity, hypothesizing a mutually
interactive relationship between the speech characteristics
of the psychologist and the child. The authors objectively
quantified acoustic-prosodic cues of the psychologist and
of the child with ASD during spontaneous interaction,
establishing a methodology for future large-sample analysis.
Method: Speech acoustic-prosodic features were
semiautomatically derived from segments of semistructured
interviews (Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, ADOS;
Lord, Rutter, DiLavore, & Risi, 1999; Lord et al., 2012) with
28 children who had previously been diagnosed with ASD.
Prosody was quantified in terms of intonation, volume, rate,
and voice quality. Research hypotheses were tested via
correlation as well as hierarchical and predictive regression
between ADOS severity and prosodic cues.
Results: Automatically extracted speech features
demonstrated prosodic characteristics of dyadic interactions.
As rated ASD severity increased, both the psychologist and
the child demonstrated effects for turn-end pitch slope, and
both spoke with atypical voice quality. The psychologist’s
acoustic cues predicted the child’s symptom severity better
than did the child’s acoustic cues.
Conclusion: The psychologist, acting as evaluator and
interlocutor, was shown to adjust his or her behavior in
predictable ways based on the child’s social-communicative
impairments. The results support future study of speech
prosody of both interaction partners during spontaneous
conversation, while using automatic computational methods
that allow for scalable analysis on much larger corpora.
Key Words: autism spectrum disorder, children, prosody,
social communication, assessment, dyadic interaction
Human social interaction necessitates that each
participant continually perceive, plan, and express
multimodal pragmatic and affective cues. Thus, a
person’s ability to interact effectively may be compromised
when there is an interruption in any facet of this perception–
production loop. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a
developmental disorder defined clinically by impaired social
reciprocity and communication—jointly referred to as social
affect (Gotham, Risi, Pickles, & Lord, 2007)—as well as
by restricted, repetitive behaviors and interests (American
Psychiatric Association, 2000).
Speech prosody—which refers to the manner in which
a person utters a phrase to convey affect, mark a commu-
nicative act, or disambiguate meaning—plays a critical role in
social reciprocity. A central role of prosody is to enhance
communication of intent and, thus, enhance conversational
quality and flow. For example, a rising intonation canindicate
a request for response, whereas a falling intonation can in-
dicate finality (Cruttenden, 1997). Prosody can also be used to
indicate affect (Juslin & Scherer, 2005) or attitude (Uldall,
1960). Furthermore, speech prosody has been associated
with social-communicative behaviors such as eye contact in
children (Furrow, 1984).
a
Signal Analysis & Interpretation Laboratory (SAIL), University of
Southern California, Los Angeles
b
University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities, Keck
School of Medicine of University of Southern California and Children’s
Hospital Los Angeles
c
Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California
d
Children’s Hospital Los Angeles
Correspondence to Daniel Bone: dbone@usc.edu
Editor: Jody Kreiman
Associate Editor: Megha Sundara
Received March 14, 2013
Revision received August 25, 2013
Accepted September 5, 2013
DOI: 10.1044/2014_JSLHR-S-13-0062
Disclosure: The authors have declared that no competing interests existed at the
time of publication.
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research •Vol. 57 •1162–1177 •August 2014 •AAmerican Speech-Language-Hearing Association
1162