Naturalistic Social Communication in Autistic Females: Identification of Speech Prosody Markers

Differences in prosody are considered to be a hallmark of the autism phenotype, yet the existing body of literature has yielded inconsistent results from a wide variety of methodological approaches. Additionally, very few studies characterizing prosody have included adequate samples of autistic females, making it unclear whether conclusions from prior work can be extended to this underrepresented subgroup. Recent studies have identified unique ways in which autistic females differ from peers in other domains of pragmatic language. Given the important role that prosody plays in social communication and clinical assessment, understanding prosody in autistic females is critical. The purpose of this study is to characterize speech prosody in a large, matched sample of school-aged (4 – 8 years) autistic and non-autistic males and females (N = 80, 50% female). Acoustic data (measures of pitch and rhythm) were drawn from a conversation task between a child and an experimenter, who asked the child about general topics and topics of special interest. Effects of sex, diagnosis, and conversation topic were seen across several prosodic variables. Additional effects of social measures and language ability were examined, revealing important interactions with sex and diagnostic group on prosody. These results underscore the importance of experimental design and group-specific considerations when characterizing prosody in autistic youth.