Prosodic Disturbances in Autistic Children Speaking French

The present study investigated prosody, particularlyprominence and prosodic contours in relation to speech actsthat carry useful information to maintain and regulatecommunicative intent and conversational skills. Participantswere eight autistic French-speaking children aged from 4 to 6.Spontaneous speech samples were collected in a free playsituation. Results revealed important prosodic disturbances inrelation to declaratives, exclamations and questions. Suchpatterns of results, to a certain extent, support the hypothesisthat abnormal prosody is identified as a core deficit inindividuals with autism