Processing of prosodic cues of uncertainty in autistic and non-autistic adults: a study based on articulatory speech synthesis

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • Charlotte Bellinghausen - , University of Duisburg-Essen (Author)
  • Bernhard Schröder - , University of Duisburg-Essen (Author)
  • Reinhold Rauh - , University Medical Center Freiburg (Author)
  • Andreas Riedel - , University Medical Center Freiburg, Luzerner Psychiatrie (Author)
  • Paula Dahmen - , University of Duisburg-Essen (Author)
  • Peter Birkholz - , Chair of Speech Technology and Cognitive Systems, TUD Dresden University of Technology (Author)
  • Ludger Tebartz van Elst - , University Medical Center Freiburg (Author)
  • Thomas Fangmeier - , University Medical Center Freiburg (Author)

Abstract

Introduction: We investigated the prosodic perception of uncertainty cues in adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) compared to neurotypical adults (NTC). Method: We used articulatory synthetic speech to express uncertainty in a human-machine scenario by varying the three acoustic cues pause, intonation, and hesitation. Twenty-eight adults with ASD and 28 NTC adults rated each answer for uncertainty, naturalness, and comprehensibility. Results: Both groups reliably perceived different levels of uncertainty. Stimuli were rated as less uncertain by the ASD group, but not significantly. Only when we pooled the recipients’ ratings for all three cues, did we find a significant group difference. In terms of reaction time, we observed longer reaction times in the ASD group compared to the neurotypical comparison group for the uncertainty level hesitation & strong intonation, but the differences were not significant after Bonferroni correction. Furthermore, our results showed a significant group difference between the correlation of uncertainty and naturalness, i.e. the correlation in the ASD group is significantly lower than in the NTC group. Obtained effect size estimates can inform sample size calculations in future studies for the reliable identification of group differences. Discussion: In future work, we would like to further investigate the interaction of all three cues and uncertainty perception. It would be interesting to further vary the duration of the pause and also to use different types of fillers. From a developmental perspective, uncertainty perception should also be investigated in children and adolescents with ASD.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number1347913
Number of pages21
JournalFrontiers in psychiatry
Volume15 (2024)
Publication statusPublished - 14 Oct 2024
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0003-0167-8123/work/172081832

Keywords

Sustainable Development Goals

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Keywords

  • autism spectrum disorder, emotion perception, prosody, speech perception, theory of mind, uncertainty