{"id":620342,"date":"2024-09-16T11:23:38","date_gmt":"2024-09-16T15:23:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=620342"},"modified":"2025-11-19T15:30:58","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T20:30:58","slug":"what-is-speech-prosody-definition-autism-620342","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/what-is-speech-prosody-definition-autism-620342\/","title":{"rendered":"Why teens with autism struggle with speech intonation"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new study reveals that difficulties in adapting to changes in speech patterns may affect how adolescents with autism understand tone and meaning.<\/h2>\n

Verbal communication isn\u2019t just about the words we use\u2014it\u2019s also about how we say them. For example, the phrase \u201cI can\u2019t believe it\u201d can convey surprise if said with a rising intonation or it can express sarcasm if delivered with a flat tone. Emphasizing different words or altering the tempo of speech can dramatically alter the message conveyed.<\/p>\n

Researchers have long known that interpretating these variations in speech can pose challenges for individuals with autism, but they didn\u2019t know exactly why.<\/p>\n

According to new research from the University of Rochester<\/a>, it may be because their brains have difficulties processing and adapting to changes in speech patterns. In a paper published in Scientific Reports<\/em><\/a>, the researchers\u2014including Chigusa Kurumada<\/a>, an associate professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences<\/a>, and Loisa Bennetto<\/a>, an associate professor in the Departments of Psychology<\/a>, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and Neuroscience<\/a>\u2014highlight a complex intersection of sensory processing and cognitive interpretation, offering new insights into the diverse ways people experience and interpret communication.<\/p>\n

Understanding speech prosody<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The researchers studied adolescents aged 12 to 17, with and without autism, and how each group understands speech prosody. Prosody refers to the use of changes in pitch, rhythm, volume, and timing to express meaning and emotion. Distinguishing a question from a statement\u2014\u201cIs it raining?\u201d versus \u201cIt\u2019s raining.\u201d\u2014or conveying excitement, sadness, or sarcasm, are all examples of prosody.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>Our article is one of the first to show that perceptual inflexibility affects linguistic communication.\u201d<\/div>\n

Adolescence is an especially interesting time from a speech science perspective, Kurumada says, because \u201cit is a time when children\u2019s social networks dramatically expand, as do their linguistic experiences as their brains develop to pay more attention to unfamiliar voices.\u201d<\/p>\n

For individuals with autism, this developmental stage often presents challenges, particularly in understanding the subtleties of speech prosody. Researchers traditionally attributed problems with speech prosody to either a reduced sensitivity to subtle sound variations or challenges in interpreting social cues that convey others\u2019 thoughts and emotions. Kurumada, Bennetto, and their team tested more than 150 participants and found instead that autism is linked to perceptual inflexibility\u2014a reduced ability to adapt to the constant changes and variations of human speech.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur article is one of the first to show that perceptual inflexibility affects linguistic communication,\u201d Kurumada says.<\/p>\n

Next steps in exploring perceptual inflexibility<\/strong><\/h3>\n

In everyday conversation, people exhibit a wide range in how they use prosody to convey meaning. To grasp what each speaker intends, listeners must constantly adjust their perception to accommodate these individual variations in vocal style.<\/p>\n

As Kurumada, Bennetto, and their team found, challenges with speech prosody are related to how the brain processes and interprets auditory information and how flexible one is at adapting an understanding of different prosodies.<\/p>\n

The research provides a novel explanation for why speech communication is more difficult for adolescents with autism versus adolescents without autism, especially at a developmental stage when social interactions become considerably more diverse and require the flexibility to navigate them.<\/p>\n

Bennetto says future research will explore how this adaptivity develops from childhood to adolescence, in both children with autism and those without autism.<\/p>\n

\u201cReduced perceptual and linguistic flexibility may be a cause of social communication difficulties in autism, or a consequence of limited or different social experiences in childhood. It is critical to understand how neurocognitive diversity may shape children\u2019s linguistic development.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new study reveals that difficulties in adapting to changes in speech patterns may affect how adolescents with autism understand tone and meaning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":620662,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[116],"tags":[18672,18592,18572,16072],"class_list":["post-620342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sci-tech","tag-department-of-brain-and-cognitive-sciences","tag-department-of-psychology","tag-research-finding","tag-school-of-arts-and-sciences"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhy teens with autism struggle with speech intonation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A new study reveals that difficulties in adapting to speech prosody may affect how adolescents with autism understand tone and meaning.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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