Speech is generated by multiple organs, such as the lungs, vocal chords, and the tongue, all of which modulate sound over time. Some features of this modulation pattern convey identities of phonetic segments: what is said. Complementary, suprasegmental, features refer to how it is said. These features can have communicative functions, in which case we use the term prosody. These communicative functions range from linguistic functions (e.g., lexical stress), to pragmatic functions (e.g., socially appropriate ton; or conveying doubt), to affective functions (e.g., screaming to convey anger). Suprasegmental features do not always have communicative functions, as, e.g., in hoarseness caused by vocal cord lesions. Abnormal receptive or expressive prosody is present in a wide range of disorders, including Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), Down's syndrome (DS), dysarthria, Parkinson's disease, depression, schizophrenia, aphasia, Alzheimer's disease, TBI, Language Impairment, bipolar disorder, ADHD, and PTSD. The characteristics of these prosodic abnormalities and underlying brain dysfunction are still largely unknown. This lack of knowledge, despite the important light research on prosody could cast on brain dysfunction in a large set of medical conditions, can have only one cause: 'Current instruments for assessing prosodic deficits are decades behind those that are used for clinical assessment of other aspects of language' [Diehl, J. J., & Paul, R. (2009). The assessment and treatment of prosodic disorders and neurological theories of prosody. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 11(4), 287-292.] The best-developed instrument, Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (PEPS-C), a computer-aided battery of 2-alternative choice receptive tasks and speech generation tasks (scored correct/incorrect), while a major leap forwards, has many limitations - only further illustrating the immature state of the prosody assessment. Building on our broad expertise in computerized prosody assessment, we propose to build a system that addresses these shortcomings. The system performs automated scoring and acoustic analysis of expressive prosody, allows stimuli to be acoustically modified for detailed perceptual assessment of receptive prosody, and can be extended by researchers to include novel tasks. It is evaluated with individuals who have ASD (adults and children), DS (adults and children), or MCI, and a typically developing control group.
Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC)
Autism Research Database (AFD)
