2019 Volume 30 Issue 4 Pages 329-340
Children with autism spectrum disorders are reported to have difficulties in producing and adjusting speech prosody, but there is no comprehensive scale available in Japan that can assess their expressive prosody across different functions. This study developed and tested an assessment scale for the prosodic production skill. Parents of autistic and typically-developing children ranging from 6 to 12 years of age responded to the questionnaire that inquired about their speech characteristics. Factor analysis was conducted on data obtained from 104 respondents, acquiring four factors with 23 question items, namely, vocal naturalness, adjustment for others, speech mimicry and speaker attitude. Analysis of variance revealed that the scores for all the above subscales have significant group differences. Moreover, their total average scores were correlated with the ratings of autistic symptoms and general communication skills but not with age and non-verbal intelligence. These findings suggest that this scale would be useful as the primary assessment tool to recognize the speech profile of autistic children who need a more detailed assessment and clinical support.
