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ERIC Number: EJ1400064
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2023
Pages: 15
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1368-2822
EISSN: EISSN-1460-6984
Successful Lexical Tone Production of Mandarin Chinese Autistic Children with Intellectual Impairment
Chen, Ao; Zhao, Ru; Huang, Gan; Li, Aijun; Cheung, Hintat
International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, v58 n6 p1912-1926 2023
Background: Atypical speech prosody has been commonly found among autistic children. Yet it remains unknown whether prosody impairment originates from poor pitch ability in general or whether it is the result of the difficulty in understanding and using prosody for communicative purposes. Aims: To investigate whether native Mandarin Chinese-speaking autistic children with intellectual impairment were able to accurately produce native lexical tones, which are pitch patterns that distinguish word meaning lexically and serve little social purpose. Methods & Procedures: Using a picture-naming task, thirteen 8-13-year-old Mandarin Chinese-speaking autistic children with intellectual impairment were tested on their production of Chinese lexical tones. Chronical age-matched typically developing (TD) children were included as the control group. Perceptual assessment and phonetic analyses were conducted with the produced lexical tones. Outcomes & Results: The majority of the lexical tones produced by the autistic children were perceived as accurate by adult judges. Phonetic analysis of the pitch contours found no significant difference between the two groups, and the autistic children and TD children used the phonetic features in comparable ways when differentiating the lexical tones. However, the lexical tone accuracy rate was lower among the autistic children than among the TDs, and the larger individual difference was observed among the autistic children than the TD children. Conclusions & Implications: These results indicate that autistic children are able to produce the global contours of the lexical tones, and pitch deficits do not seem to qualify as a core feature of autism.
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2191/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A