Use of Prosody in Females and Males with Autism Spectrum Disorders
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Use of Prosody in Females and Males with Autism Spectrum Disorders
IRAS ID
261768
Contact name
Nina Parrella
Contact email
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 0 months, 26 days
Research summary
This project intends to study prosodic use in females and males with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Prosody is a language domain that involves stress, intonation and pitch, and helps us to convey meaning and emotion. In individuals with ASD, prosody has been described as a striking, disorganised feature that is less utilized to enhance communication.
It is possible that females and males with ASD use prosody differently. Prosodic differences related to emotion recognition have been identified between typically developing females and males, with females regarded more competent than males (Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright 2004). Also, females with a diagnosis of ASD and IQ above 70 show increased functional social language behaviour compared to males with ASD (Head, McGillivray, & Stokes, 2014), indicating that their prosodic use may also be more purposeful.To address this broad theme, the dominant question asked is; do females and males with ASD differ in their abilities to use prosody? Understanding if and how females and males with ASD perform differently on specific prosodic production tasks could assist in deconstructing their social aptitudes and lead to alteration of expectations in clinical settings.
It is hypothesised that females with ASD will use larger pitch ranges in general compared to males with ASD. Furthermore, they are anticipated to use pitch to mark information structure more meaningfully than males. If these conclusions are reached, it would be appropriate to assume that females with ASD use prosody to enhance their communication more effectively than males with ASD do. If behavioural phenotypes vary between males and females with ASD (Attwood, 2007), sex-specific behavioural or cognitive criteria for defining ASD will be of substantial value for this neglected population (Healthed, 2018).
REC name
London - Surrey Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
19/LO/0573
Date of REC Opinion
11 Apr 2019
REC opinion
Unfavourable Opinion