Voice Analysis: Autism Spectrum Disorder

  • Fusaroli, Lambrechts, Bang, Bowler, & Gaigg (2017)
  • Is voice a marker for Autism spectrum disorder? A systematic review and meta-analysis
  • N papers = 23, N effect sizes = 169, N participants = 1147
  • Last updated: 2020-12-19
  • Curator(s): LNJ, ND
  • Search Strategy: "A literature search was conducted using Google Scholar, PubMed and Web of Science on April 15, 2015, updated on March 4, 2016 and then again on June 21, 2016. The search terms used were (prosody OR intonation OR inflection OR intensity OR pitch OR fundamental frequency OR speech rate OR voice quality OR acoustic) AND (autis* OR Asperger). Additional search for unpublished studies was performed through additional web searches (on Google and Bing), and by directly contacting authors of the published studies and interested participants of the IMFAR 2014, 2015 and 2016 conferences. Furthermore it should be noted that Google Scholar covers most (if not all) dissertation repositories. The papers thus found were searched for additional references and the resulting set was screened by two of the authors (RF and AL) according to the following criteria: empirical study, quantification of acoustic features in the vocal production of participants with ASD, sample including at least two individuals with ASD, inclusion of a typically developing comparison group (TD) or an assessment of variation in acoustic features in relation to severity of clinical features. Non-TD comparison groups (e.g., with language impairment, or ADHD) were not included as not enough studies were present to assess patterns beyond the single study." (Fusaroli et al., 2017)
  • Systematic: yes
  • Voice features: speech_duration, speech_rate, pause_length, pause_number, pitch, pitch_range, pitch_sd, pitch_variability, intensity

Sharda, M., Subhadra, T.P., Sahay, S., Nagaraja, C., Singh, L., Mishra, R., ... Singh, N.C. (2010). Sounds of melody–pitch patterns of speech in autism. Neuroscience Letters, 478, 42–45.

Filipe, M.G., Frota, S., Castro, S.L., & Vicente, S.G. (2014). Atypical prosody in Asperger syndrome: Perceptual and acoustic measurements. Journal of Autism and Develop- mental Disorders, 44, 1972–1981.

Diehl, J.J., Watson, D.G., Bennetto, L., McDonough, J., & Gunlogson, C. (2009). An acoustic analysis of prosody in high-functioning autism. Applied Psycholinguistics, 30, 385–404.

Scharfstein, L.A., Beidel, D.C., Sims, V.K., & Finnell, L.R. (2011). Social skills deficits and vocal characteristics of children with social phobia or Asperger’s disorder: A comparative study. Journal of Abnormal Child psychology, 39, 865–875.

Grossman, R.B., Bemis, R.H., Skwerer, D.P., & Tager-Flusberg, H. (2010). Lexical and affective prosody in children with high-functioning autism. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 53, 778–793.

Bonneh, Y.S., Levanon, Y., Dean-Pardo, O., Lossos, L., & Adini, Y. (2011). Abnormal speech spectrum and increased pitch variability in young autistic children. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 4, 237.

Nadig, A., & Shaw, H. (2012). Acoustic and perceptual measurement of expressive prosody in high-functioning autism: Increased pitch range and what it means to listeners. Journal of Autism and Development Disorders, 42, 499–511.

Brisson, J., Martel, K., Serres, J., Sirois, S., & Adrien, J.L. (2014). Acoustic analysis of oral productions of infants later diagnosed with autism and their mother. Infant Mental Health Journal, 35, 285–295.

Chan, K.K., & To, C.K. (2016). Do individuals with high-functioning autism who speak a tone language show intonation deficits? Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 46, 1784–1792.

Quigley, J., McNally, S., & Lawson, S. (2016). Prosodic patterns in interaction of low-risk and at-risk-of-autism spectrum disorders infants and their mothers at 12 and 18 months. Language Learning and Development, 12, 295–310.

Dahlgren, S., Sandberg, A. D., Strömbergsson, S., Wenhov, L., Råstam, M., & Nettelbladt, U. (2018). Prosodic traits in speech produced by children with autism spectrum disorders–Perceptual and acoustic measurements. Autism & Developmental Language Impairments, 3, 2396941518764527.

Fusaroli, R., Lambrechts, A., Yarrow, K., Maras, K., & Gaigg, S. (2016). Conversational voice patterns in adult English speakers with ASD. Paper presented at the IMFAR 2016, Baltimore, United States.

Fusaroli, R., Bang, D., & Weed, E. (2013). Non-Linear Analyses of Speech and Prosody in Asperger’s Syndrome. Paper presented at the IMFAR 2013, San Sebastian.

Fusaroli, R., Grossman, R.B., Cantio, C., Bilenberg, N., & Weed, E. (2015). The temporal structure of the autistic voice: A cross-linguistic examination. Paper presented at the IMFAR 2015, Salt Lake City, United States.

Hubbard, D. J., Faso, D. J., Assmann, P. F., & Sasson, N. J. (2017). Production and perception of emotional prosody by adults with autism spectrum disorder. Autism Research, 10(12), 1991-2001.

Seidl, A., Cristia, A., Soderstrom, M., Ko, E. S., Abel, E. A., Kellerman, A., & Schwichtenberg, A. J. (2018). Infant–mother acoustic–prosodic alignment and developmental risk. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 61(6), 1369-1380.

Hubbard, K., & Trauner, D.A. (2007). Intonation and emotion in autistic spectrum disorders. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 36, 159–173.

Nakai, Y., Takashima, R., Takiguchi, T., & Takada, S. (2014). Speech intonation in children with autism spectrum disorder. Brain and Development, 36, 516–522.

Green, H., & Tobin, Y. (2009). Prosodic analysis is difficult... but worth it: A study in high functioning autism. Interna- tional Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 11, 308–315.

Parish-Morris, J., Liberman, M., Ryant, N., Cieri, C., Bateman, L., Ferguson, E., & Schultz, R.T. (2016). Exploring Autism Spectrum Disorders Using HLT. In Proceedings of 2016 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Associa- tion for Computational Linguistics — Human Language Technologies. Stroudsburg (PA): Association for Computa- tional Linguistics.

Kaland, C., Krahmer, E., & Swerts, M. (2012). Contrastive into- nation in autism: The effect of speaker-and listener-perspective. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2012. Portland, Oregon.

Morett, L.M., O’hearn, K., Luna, B., & Ghuman, A.S. (2016). Altered gesture and speech production in ASD detract from in-person communicative quality. Journal of Autism and Developmental disorders, 46, 998–1012.

Paul, R., Bianchi, N., Augustyn, A., Klin, A., & Volkmar, F.R. (2008). Production of syllable stress in speakers with autism spectrum disorders. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 2, 110–124.

Thurber, C., & Tager-Flusberg, H. (1993). Pauses in the narratives produced by autistic, mentally retarded, and normal children as an index of cognitive demand. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 23, 309–322.