Journal
BRAIN AND LANGUAGE
Volume 106, Issue 2, Pages 144-152Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2008.04.002
Keywords
autism; prosody; language; comprehension; intonation; syntax; pragmatics; high-functioning
Funding
- NCRR NIH HHS [M01 RR000044-42, M01 RR000044, M01 RR000044-44, M01 RR000044-43, M01 RR00044] Funding Source: Medline
- NIMH NIH HHS [U54 MH066397-04, U54 MH066397-01A10003, U54 MH066397-03, U54 MH066397, U54 MH066397-020003, U54 MH066397-040003, U54 MH066397-02, U54 MH066397-030003, U54 MH066397-01A1S1] Funding Source: Medline
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Individuals with autism exhibit significant impairments in prosody production, yet there is a paucity of research on prosody comprehension in this population. The current study adapted a psycholinguistic paradigm to examine whether individuals with autism are able to use prosody to resolve syntactically ambiguous sentences. Participants were 21 adolescents with high-functioning autism (HFA), and 22 typically developing controls matched on age, 10, receptive language, and gender. The HFA group was significantly less likely to use prosody to disambiguate syntax, but scored comparably to controls when syntax alone or both prosody and syntax indicated the correct response. These findings indicate that adolescents with HFA have difficulty using prosody to disambiguate syntax in comparison to typically developing controls, even when matched on chronological age, IQ, and receptive language. The implications of these findings for how individuals with autism process language are discussed. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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