The following is a summary of “Processing of prosodic cues of uncertainty in autistic and non-autistic adults: A study based on articulatory speech synthesis,” published in the September 2024 issue of Psychiatry by Bellinghausen et al.
The prosodic perception of uncertainty cues in adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) was investigated in comparison to neurotypical adults (NTC).
Researchers started a retrospective study to examine how adults with ASD and NTC perceived uncertainty cues in synthetic speech, focusing on pause, intonation, and hesitation.
They used articulatory synthetic speech to express uncertainty by varying the three acoustic cues: pause, intonation, and hesitation. About 28 adults with ASD and 28 NTC rated each response for uncertainty, naturalness, and comprehensibility.
The results showed that both groups recognized different levels of uncertainty. The ASD group rated stimuli less uncertain, which was not significant. A significant group difference appeared only when combining ratings for all three cues. Individuals with ASD had longer reaction times for hesitation and strong intonation, though not significant after Bonferroni correction. There was a notable difference in how uncertainty and naturalness were correlated, with the ASD group’s correlation being significantly lower. Effect size estimates may guide sample size for future studies to detect group differences.
Investigators concluded that more research is needed on how all three cues interact with uncertainty perception. Future studies should look at different pause durations and fillers and explore uncertainty perception in children and adolescents with ASD.
Source: frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1347913/abstract
