1Prosodic disturbances in autistic children speaking French

The present study investigated prosody, particularly prominence and prosodic contours in relation to speech acts that carry useful information to maintain and regulate communicative intent and conversational skills. Participants were eight autistic French-speaking children aged from 4 to 6. Spontaneous speech samples were collected in a free play situation. Results revealed important prosodic disturbances in relation to declaratives, exclamations and questions. Such patterns of results, to a certain extent, support the hypothesis that abnormal prosody is identified as a core deficit in individuals with autism. 1