Sabrina Chuyue He
Senior Thesis | 2025
Perception and Imitation of Linguistic Prosody in Autistic Adults
Sabrina Chuyue He
Abstract
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have been recognized to have challenges with an aspect of spoken language, prosody, which can be thought of as the “melody” of speech and that gives crucial information during everyday communication. Although there is a growing body of research on prosody and autism, there is a gap in research on prosody and autism traits, with fewer studies including quantitative acoustic analysis. Current literature regarding quantitative masking abilities in autistic individuals is also limited. The purpose of this study is to examine linguistic prosody perception and imitation in autistic adults (ages 18 to 45) compared to a neurotypical group. Overall, the results showed that there were no group differences in the prosody perception task and that prosody perception scores were not correlated to scores on the Comprehensive Autistic Trait Inventory (CATI).
Additionally, a significant difference was found between groups for the duration of the target word for the imitation task. These results suggest that autistic individuals perform similarly to non-autistic individuals in structured settings where they are attentive to prosody, but, aligning with some current research, may have differences in duration of speech when imitating.
Keywords: Autism Spectrum Disorder, linguistic prosody, perception, imitation, masking
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by deficits in social communication and restricted or repetitive behaviors or interests (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). One component of social communication that can be studied in relation to ASD is prosody. Prosody is defined as a suprasegmental attribute of speech, encompassing aspects of language such as pitch, tone, stress, and intonation. The term suprasegmental describes elements of speech that are used on top of speech features that are necessary to define a phonetic segment such as vowel or consonant sounds (Gussenhoven & Chen, 2020). So, prosody can be thought of as the “melody” of spoken utterances. Prosody is a broad term that contains affective prosody, pragmatic prosody, and grammatical prosody. Linguistic prosody, which is the focus of the present paper, is the type of prosody that encompasses both grammatical and pragmatic prosody and is an aspect of prosody used to give extra depth or meaning to spoken words at the sentencelevel (Grice et al., 2023). Prosody is directly related to autism, because it plays an important role in speech and communication of social cues (Grice et al., 2023). Since one of the earliest publications on autism, autistic individuals1 have been noticed to both perceive and produce prosody abnormally, so studying prosody can help characterize these group differences (Asperger, 1944).
Autism traits exist on a spectrum not only within diagnosed individuals, but throughout the general public as well. The difference between non-autistic individuals with high versus low levels of autistic traits is similar to that of clinically diagnosed autistic versus non-autistic individuals (English et al., 2021). The Comprehensive Autistic Trait Inventory (CATI; English et al., 2021) is a way to quantify autistic traits in individuals regardless of an ASD diagnosis. Compared to other surveys that characterize autistic traits such as the Autism-spectrum Quotient (AQ), Broad Autism Phenotype Questionnaire (BAPQ), and the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS-2), the CATI encompasses more
1 Iden&ty-first language used in accordance with the APA Style Guide, 7th edi&on, on Bias Free Language and is also consistent with the preference of many au&s&c individuals (Brown, 2011).
subscales that better reflect the DSM-V such as sensory sensitivity, physical repetitive behaviors, and camouflaging.
In surveying existing literature, there has been substantial research done on prosody and autism, though there have been limited attempts to examine prosody in relation to autism traits. Although prosody differences between autistic and non-autistic individuals have been perceptually recognized since early studies such as Asperger (1944), results for characterizing differences have been mixed with some studies reporting group differences between ASD and non-autism groups while others did not. Through researching different types of prosody such as affective, grammatical, or pragmatic in different ways (perception, production) with both acoustic and perceptual analyses, these studies strived to encompass all aspects of prosody.
In the literature, there have been many approaches, mostly behavioral, to study linguistic prosody. This includes both targeting prosody perception and production. For linguistic prosody perception, some studies had participants decide on the meaning of a word or sentence based on the prosodic contour (Globerson et al., 2015; Grossman et al., 2010; Paul et al., 2005; Martzoukou et al., 2017; Wang et al., 2022). This could mean that participants are directed to choose the correct meaning of a word/phrase (such as HOT dog versus hot DOG) (Grossman et al., 2010) or to differentiate between a statement and a question (Wang et al., 2022). In line with the present study, Paul et al. (2005) used a “Pragmatic Perception of Stress” task, which assesses perception of linguistic prosody through the use of emphasis. Participants are given the answer to a question, such as “I want CHOCOLATE ice cream,” and then produce the question that was asked, which in this case would be “Do you want vanilla?” The present study found significant group differences for this task, with the neurotypical (NT) group performing significantly better than the ASD group.
As for prosody production, some studies used naturalistic tasks with less structure such as narrating a story (Dahlgren et al., 2018; Lau et al., 2023; Patel et al., 2020), while others used more structured tasks like imitation tasks (Diehl & Paul, 2012; Wang et al., 2022). Although further research is necessary for spontaneous tasks, the focus of the present study is on imitation. Wang et al. (2022) found no significant group differences
for their imitation task, but interestingly found a positive correlation between their perceptive task and their imitation task. This suggests that autistic individuals may not have as much difficulty in imitation, but their ability may be dictated by their perceptual abilities. Furthermore, although Paul et al. (2005) found that their NT group performed significantly better than the ASD group in an imitation task, these differences were largely driven by general language abilities. This means that their imitation abilities could be matched if their language ability was matched.
Various forms of analyses on prosody production have been used, such as perceptual and acoustic. Focusing on acoustic analysis, many studies have found no or few significant group differences (Grossman et al., 2010; Paul et al., 2005; Wang et al., 2022). Acoustic analysis for some studies found some common characteristics of autistic participants that are relevant to this paper’s findings: longer utterance duration (Diehl & Paul, 2012; Grossman et al., 2010) and more words per utterance (Dahlgren et al., 2018).
For individuals with ASD, a factor that can impact prosody and speech patterns is masking. As Alaghband-Rad et al. (2023) points out, the term “masking” has been used interchangeably with “camouflage,” “compensation,” “imitation,” and “copying.” Although Leaf et al. (2023) identifies nuances between these different terms, the end goal is for autistic individuals to minimize the appearance of ASD traits in order to better fit in with their neurotypical peers. One way that autistic individuals mask ASD symptoms is by mimicking neurotypical individuals in many ways, with one of them being speech (AlaghbandRad et al., 2023). This can involve speech imitation, and one prediction of this study is that prosody aspects such as emphasis may be overcompensated as a way of masking. Although there has been more research done on masking recently, there is still a lack of research, especially with quantitative empirical evidence. The imitation task in this paper aims to add to the growing body of literature.
Masking is an important area of research, since studies have discovered its harmful effects. In autistic individuals specifically, masking seems to have particularly harmful effects such as increased rates of stress, anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts (Alaghband-
Rad et al., 2023; Leaf et al., 2023; Miller et al., 2021). There are also reported side effects of artificiality or losing a sense of self, which may also magnify difficulties in forming genuine connections (Miller et al., 2021). There has also been a widely reported gender disparity in masking prevalence, with autistic females reporting higher rates of masking than autistic males (Alaghband-Rad et al., 2023; Leaf et al., 2023; Miller et al., 2021). It is important to note that this was not universal, however, and that this gender disparity was not recognized in neurotypical individuals (Alaghband-Rad et al., 2023; Leaf et al., 2023). Although the present study does not explore the underpinnings of this gender disparity, it is an important area of research for the future.
The goal of the present study is: 1) to identify if linguistic prosody perception impairment is correlated to self-reported autistic traits even in individuals without an ASD diagnosis and 2) to identify if linguistic prosody imitation abilities are overcompensated as a way of masking. Two hypotheses were made based on existing studies. The first is that higher scores on the CATI will correspond to lower scores on the prosody perception task and that there will be group differences on the task with the ASD group performing worse. Our second hypothesis is that there will be no group differences for the imitation task or individuals with higher CATI scores and/or ASD will perform better.
Methods
Participant information
There were two cohorts of participants included in the present study: in-person and online. In-person participants were recruited from the greater Boston area of the United States as part of a larger study via flyers (in person and on social media websites). The larger study consists of a series of fMRI and behavioral tasks, but for the purposes of this paper only the prosody perception task was considered. We report data from a total of N = 28 English-speaking adult participants between the ages of 18 and 45 (n = 9 ASD (4 females); n = 19 non-autistic (12 females); Table 1). Autistic participants’ self-reported autism diagnosis was confirmed by administration of the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS, ADOS-2; Lord et al., 2000). Two participants with a self-reported autism diagnosis did not meet the cutoff for ASD on the ADOS, and so were excluded in analysis (n=2). The participants were also administered the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test, Second Edition (KBIT-2; Kaufman & Kaufman, 2004) as a test of nonverbal intelligence. Exclusion criteria included: history of hearing or visual impairments. Non-autistic participants were excluded if they reported a family history of autism or other neurological condition. Participants were assured that their data would be deidentified. All participants provided written informed consent and were monetarily compensated for their time in accordance with the MIT Committee on Use of Humans as Experimental Subjects (MIT IRB).
Table 1
In-Person Participant Information
Males: Females (n) 5:4 7:12
Note. ASD: Autism Spectrum Disorder, M: mean, S.D.: standard deviation, NT: neurotypical.
***p<0.001.
To assess prosody perception performance in a larger sample, a larger group of participants between the ages of 18 and 45 were recruited through online platforms. Online participants also completed expressive prosody tasks (not reported here) and additional phenotypic characterization measures, including a nonverbal IQ measure (Test My Brain, Matrices subtest) and language measure (Vocabulary Size Test). Autistic participants were recruited through “SPARK” (Simons Powering Autism Research), a national database of individuals who have an existing clinical diagnosis of autism with a high degree of diagnostic validity (Fombonne et al., 2022; SPARK Consortium, 2018). NT
participants were recruited through Prolific (Prolific.org), an online scientific research study adult recruitment tool. Non-autistic participants were excluded if they reported a family history of autism or other neurological condition. Data from a total of N=88 participants (n = 45 ASD (21 females); n = 41 non-autistic (19 females); Table 2) are included in the present paper.
Table 2
Online Participant Information
Males: Females (n) 23:21a 22:19
Note. ASD: Autism Spectrum Disorder, M: mean, S.D.: standard deviation, NT: neurotypical. a One participant did not specify sex. ***p<0.001.
Materials
Audio clips for the prosody perception and imitation tasks were each pre-recorded with a flat prosodic contour and modified via the manipulation tool on Praat. Pitch points were removed from the sentences. The pitch of the predetermined target word was increased by 1.5x the pitch of the midpoint of the sentence. The midpoint marker for duration of the target word was dragged up to 1.5. Other minor adjustments for pitch were made to maintain a natural flow of the sentence. During participant sessions, questions and pictorial answer choices were presented on a Macbook using the Keynote application.
Comprehensive Autistic Trait Inventory (CATI)
All participants were given the Comprehensive Autistic Trait Inventory (CATI, English et al., 2021) online with no time limit. There were 42 statements provided to participants that cover six broad areas that are associated with autism. This includes social interactions, communication, social camouflage, repetitive behaviors, cognitive rigidity, and sensory sensitivity. For each statement, participants are given a range of agreement options from “definitely disagree” to “definitely agree.” The CATI was then scored numerically with an overall score and individual scores for each of the six subscales. An overall score of 134 or higher is considered to classify a participant as autistic, though it is not a clinical measure and was not used to confirm autism diagnosis of participants.
Prosody perception task
Participants were presented with two trial runs and 18 experimental runs. Three experimental runs were excluded during analysis due to low accuracy rates for a total of 15 experimental runs included in the results. See appendix A for the presented sentences with the emphasized word fully capitalized. The two trial runs acted as controls. The prosodic contour of the audio files in the trial runs had no
effect on the answer choices. Participants answered both trial runs correctly and then moved onto the task. Each statement has an adjective or noun emphasized to convey either that the specific modifier was incorrect. For example, if the statement emphasized that the subject did not want the big RED cup, the correct answer would be a big cup in a different color. The statement was followed by a question with three pictorial choices. Two answers for the experimental questions could be correct, but one of them was correct based on the prosody in the statement. Participants were instructed to pay attention to both what the speaker was saying and how they were saying it. Participants were aware that multiple answers may be possible, but that they should choose the best answer based on how the sentence was said. Participants were not given corrective feedback during the task.
Participants were administered a similar task through an online study in survey format. Two trial runs, two control runs, and fourteen experimental runs were conducted. Four experimental runs were excluded during analysis for below-chance accuracy in both the ASD and NT groups (<33.33%) with a total of 10 experimental runs included in the results. See appendix B for the presented trial and experimental sentences with the emphasized word fully capitalized. All the trial and experimental sentences in the online task were included in the in-person task (n=16). Similarly to the in-person task, participants online listened to an audio file with a targeted prosodic contour and chose one of three pictorial answer choices that best answered the question shown on screen. The control runs were dispersed throughout the experimental block to check for participants’ engagement and focus, since the correct answer choice did not depend on the prosodic contour of the audio file. Participants were instructed to pay attention to both what the speaker was saying and how they were saying it. Participants were aware that multiple answers may be possible, but that they should choose the best answer based on how the sentence was said. Participants were not given corrective feedback during the task. Upon completion of the task, participants were asked if they experienced audio, visual, or technical issues as well as if they cheated on the task (and if so, how). They were also asked to describe the task in one sentence with their own words to
make sure they understood the task. Participants were excluded during analysis if they answered the control runs incorrectly, did not understand the task, and/or scored a 0 on the task.
Prosody imitation task
Participants were presented with 10 pre-recorded sentences with distinct prosodic contours, with one word heavily emphasized. See appendix C for the presented sentences with the emphasized word fully capitalized. Participants were then instructed to pay close attention to both what the sentence was saying and how it was said. Then they were instructed to repeat the sentence as closely to the recording as possible. Their responses were recorded and later used in acoustic analysis. Each sentence was only played once and participants were not given corrective feedback during the task.
Data analysis
A correlation analysis was performed on excel using total CATI scores and scores for the prosody perception task. One-tailed t-tests were conducted on excel to describe the significance (if any) of group differences on the KBIT-2 or NVIQ test, prosody perception task, and CATI. Praat annotations for imitation prosody audio files were done to set up for acoustic analysis. On Praat, words and phonemes were aligned for each of the ten sentences for each participant using both cropped audio files and textgrids. Acoustic analysis was conducted on imitation task audio files. Data extracted from audio files included the duration of both target and contrast words. Target words were predetermined and manipulated to be emphasized through Praat, and contrast words were the words right before the target word in a sentence. If the target word was the first word in the sentence, the contrast word was the word directly following the target word.
Results
As expected, full CATI scores were significantly different between the ASD and NT groups for both the in-person and online groups (p<0.0001; Table 1; Table 2). One-tailed t-tests revealed that scores on the prosody perception task for the ASD and NT groups were not significantly different.
Data from correlation analysis, with the goal of identifying correlations between prosody perception scores and autism traits as defined by the CATI in autistic and non-autistic adult participants, showed that there is no significant correlation between the two scores based on autism diagnosis (Figure 1).
Figure 1
Correlation Between Full CATI Score and Prosody Perception Score Based on Diagnosis
Note. (A) In-person participant data; (B) Online participant data. ASD: Autism Spectrum Disorder, NT: neurotypical. Trend lines are linear. R2 values are shown.
Further correlation analyses were performed to identify correlations between prosody perception scores and autism traits as defined by the CATI based on sex assigned at birth. Results from correlation analysis showed that there is no significant correlation between the two scores based on sex assigned at birth (Figure 2).
Figure 2
Correlation Between Full CATI Score and Prosody Perception Score
Based on Sex
Note. (A) In-person participant data; (B) Online participant data. Trend lines are linear. R2 values are shown.
An ANOVA revealed significant group differences in duration of target and contrast words for the imitation task (Figure 3). When producing the target word, the autism group had a significantly shorter duration of the word (p < 0.01), and a marginally shorter duration of the contrast word (p < 0.10) than the NT group. Additionally, while the NT group’s production of the target word did not differ significantly in length from the model production of the word, the autism group’s duration did differ. Both the autism and NT group increased duration from the contrast word to the target word.
Figure 3
Duration of Target and Contrast Word by Group
Note. NT: Neurotypical.
†: p < 0.1; **: p < 0.01
Discussion
The present study examined prosody perception and imitation differences and trends in autistic and non-autistic adults. Custom prosody experimental tasks for both perception and imitation were used to quantify differences and trends. Perception task results were correlated with scores on the CATI with excel. Imitation task responses underwent acoustic analysis, specifically focusing on duration of target and contrast words. Our first prediction was that there was going to be a negative correlation between the prosody perception task and the total score on the CATI. This hypothesis was not supported, since none of the correlations for either of the participant groups were significant. Our second prediction was that there would be no group differences for the imitation task. This hypothesis was not supported by the data, as there were significant group differences in target word duration (p<0.01).
The prosody perception task is highly structured, especially since it is choice-based, which can explain the null results. In the existing literature, multiple studies that explored both linguistic prosody, the focus of the present study, and affective, or emotional, prosody, which was not covered in the present study, only found group differences in the affective prosody (Globerson et al., 2015; Martzoukou et al., 2017). This suggests that autistic individuals may tend to perform better in linguistic prosody tasks, specifically in more structured tasks, which aligns with the results of the present study. Additionally, the current study focuses on autistic adults. However, other studies have found age-related improvement on prosody tasks (Grice et al., 2023; Wang et al., 2022). This can explain why the autistic participants performed on a similar level as the non-autistic participants. Although the present study did find null results, correlation analysis in the prosody perception task for the inperson autistic participant group shows potential for a correlation (Figure 1). With a larger sample size, if the R2 value remained the same it could suggest a moderate correlation (R2=0.3154).
For the imitation task, significant and marginally significant differences were found in duration of target and contrast words. These results contrast those of Wang et al. (2022), whose study did not find group differences for their imitation task. Although the present study did
find significant group differences, however, both the ASD and NT groups increased their duration from the contrast word to the target word. This reveals that they both matched the general contour, in terms of duration, of the model sentence, just to a different degree. This points to a general ability in autistic adults to manipulate their prosodic contour, which may be utilized in masking. The difference in contrast word duration for the ASD and NT groups was marginally significant, which may have factored into the significant group difference for the target word. However, the marginally significant difference in duration of the target word between the ASD group and the model sentence suggest differences in speech duration. This aligns with previous research. For example, Lau et al. (2023) found significant differences in speech articulatory timing. Their study concluded that autistic individuals may have minute articulatory timing differences including extra cues in the form of pauses that may mislead listeners. Their task was expressive and naturalistic, so the results of the present study, in a more structured imitation task, indicates that duration differences may be able to be generalized to speech, both structured and spontaneous, in autistic individuals.
Limitations
As a study on the multifaceted topics of ASD and prosody, there are limitations. For the prosody perception task, the main limitation exists within the format of the task itself. Since it had a choice format, that could have led to potential guessing. Since the online participant group were given instructions on a screen without an opportunity for live clarification, online participants may have had trouble fully comprehending the instructions. This is evident when the participants consistently answered questions that were directly after the controls and trials incorrectly. This suggests that they did not completely understand the task at first and used these questions as a way to learn about the task. Although these questions were excluded, there may have been an impact on the rest of the questions. For the in-person group for both the perception and imitation task, the largest limitation is the small sample size, especially within the ASD and NT groups. Specifically for the
imitation task, the emphasis of target words in the audio files may have been exaggerated in an unnatural way and so may be an inaccurate measure for real world implications.
Future Directions
Researching more of the autism spectrum is highly valuable since these studies only focused on autistic individuals with limited impairments. Including autistic individuals from across the spectrum as well as including their input through the use of focus groups would be a valuable addition to this research. Additionally, some studies have shown that prosody ability in autistic individuals can improve over time, so expanding this research beyond adults can give important information about compensatory mechanisms individuals develop throughout their lifetime to help with prosody ability (Grice et al., 2023; Wang et al., 2022). As Bungert et al. (2024) highlights, gender identity differences are becoming more evident. Expanding the correlation to have a separate gender identity component would add to this growing body of literature. Finally, Wang et al. (2022) mentioned how their results may have differed from a study conducted on Mandarin-speaking autistic individuals. Studying prosody in more languages, especially tonal languages, can give insight into the role of prosody in different languages and the unique challenges autistic individuals face based on the language.
Conclusions
To conclude, linguistic prosody in autistic adults is a multifaceted topic that has varying implications. Autistic adults seem to perform better on linguistic prosody perception in structured settings where they are attentive to their prosody. The present study showed that linguistic prosody perception abilities do not seem to be correlated by severity of autism symptoms as described in the CATI or by sex assigned at birth. Furthermore, autistic adults are able to increase the duration of target words when imitating a sentence. This, with results from the
prosody perception task, suggests that autistic adults are able to perceive and produce prosody, but may need to put a conscious effort into it. This can point to the draining task of masking language difficulties such as prosody. Finally, the significant difference in target word duration between groups found in the present study supports existing studies and may reveal a common characteristic of language difficulties in autistic individuals.
Acknowledgements
This author expresses gratitude to Amanda O’Brien for her incredible mentorship and support throughout the research process and Elizabeth Karnaukh and Victoria Perrone for their support with refining the research report. This author would also like to thank the adults who took time to participate in the present study.
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Appendix A
In-Person Prosody Perception Trial and Experimental Sentences
Trial 1: He mailed the RED letter.
Trial 2: He went down the BIG slide.
Sentence 3: She did not buy the RED chair.
Sentence 4: I never said I wanted the BLUE hat.
Sentence 5: She did not want the short BLUE cup.
Sentence 6: She did not want to drink the HOT coffee.
Sentence 7: She did not say she was buying the RED car.
Sentence 8: He did not tell me he liked the LITTLE dog.
Sentence 9: She did not like the BIG brown dog.
Sentence 10: She did not buy the red CHAIR.
Sentence 11: She did not want the SHORT blue cup.
Sentence 12: He rejected the YELLOW pencil.
Sentence 13: She did not like the big BROWN dog.
Sentence 14: He canceled his order for the STRIPED sweater.
Sentence 15: He does not always like to eat BUTTERED bread.
Sentence 16: I never SAID I wanted the blue hat.
Sentence 17: He canceled his order for the striped SWEATER.
Sentence 18: He stopped liking the CHOCOLATE cookies.
Sentence 19: She did not SAY she was buying the red car.
Sentence 20: He did not TELL me he liked the little dog.
Appendix B
Online Prosody Perception Trial and Experimental Sentences
Trial 1: He mailed the RED letter.
Trial 2: He went down the BIG slide.
Sentence 3: She did not want the short BLUE cup.
Sentence 4: She did not want to drink the HOT coffee.
Sentence 5: She did not say she was buying the RED car.
Sentence 6: He did not tell me he liked the LITTLE dog.
Sentence 7: I never said I wanted the BLUE hat.
Sentence 8: She did not like the BIG brown dog.
Sentence 9: She did not want the SHORT blue cup.
Sentence 10: He rejected the YELLOW pencil.
Sentence 11: She did not like the big BROWN dog.
Sentence 12: He canceled his order for the STRIPED sweater.
Sentence 13: He does not always like to eat BUTTERED bread.
Sentence 15: He canceled his order for the striped SWEATER.
Sentence 16: He stopped liking the CHOCOLATE cookies.
Sentence 17: She did not SAY she was buying the red car.
Appendix C
Imitation Sentences
Sentence 1: The GIRL walked the dog.
Sentence 2: The new CHIPS were salty.
Sentence 3: Her OLD car was brown.
Sentence 4: I drove to the party.
Sentence 5: The cup was FULL of tea.
Sentence 6: He WALKED home from the store.
Sentence 7: WE did not open the gift.
Sentence 8: The wallet was FOUND in the park.
Sentence 9: SHE did not want to move there.
Sentence 10: The child wore the RED striped hat.