Marisa Filipe

Prosodic development in European Portuguese from childhood to adulthood

We describe the European Portuguese version of a test of prosodic abilities originally developed for English: the Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (Peppe & McCann, 2003). Using this test, we examined the development of several components of European Portuguese prosody between 5 and 20 years of age (N = 131). Results showed prosodic performance improving with age: 5-year-olds reach adultlike performance in the affective prosodic tasks; 7-year-olds mastered the ability to discriminate and produce short prosodic items, as well as the ability to understand question versus declarative intonation; 8-year-olds mastered the ability to discriminate long prosodic items; 9-year-olds mastered the ability to produce question versus declarative intonation, as well as the ability to identify focus; 10- to 11-year-olds mastered the ability to produce long prosodic items; 14- to 15-year-olds mastered the ability to comprehend and produce syntactically ambiguous utterances disambiguated by prosody; and 18- to 20-year-olds mastered the ability to produce focus. Cross-linguistic comparisons showed that linguistic form–meaning relations do not necessarily develop at the same pace across languages. Some prosodic contrasts are hard to achieve for younger Portuguese-speaking children, namely, the production of chunking and focus.

Affective prosody in European Portuguese: Perceptual and acoustic characterization of one-word utterances

Abstract A perceptual and acoustic characterization was provided on the expression of liking and disliking in the European Portuguese language. Thirty participants identified vocal patterns and judged the intensity of expressed affect in one-word items recorded by six untrained speakers. Listeners consistently associated vocal profiles with the two emotional patterns of liking and disliking. However, liking intonation was easier to recognize than disliking intonation. The feature most commonly associated with liking intonation was a wider and higher F0 pattern and a rising-falling contour. For disliking, the results revealed a flatter melodic pattern with a fall into the stressed syllable yielding a low plateau. In sum, both prosodic patterns showed different and consistent correlates.

Executive functions and prosodic abilities in children with high-functioning autism

Little is known about the relationship between prosodic abilities and executive function skills. As deficits in executive functions (EFs) and prosodic impairments are characteristics of autism, we examined how EFs are related to prosodic performance in children with high-functioning autism (HFA). Fifteen children with HFA (M = 7.4 years; SD = 1.12), matched to 15 typically developing peers on age, gender, and non-verbal intelligence participated in the study. The Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (PEPS-C) was used to assess prosodic performance. The Children’s Color Trails Test (CCTT-1, CCTT-2, and CCTT Interference Index) was used as an indicator of executive control abilities. Our findings suggest no relation between prosodic abilities and visual search and processing speed (assessed by CCTT-1), but a significant link between prosodic skills and divided attention, working memory/sequencing, set-switching, and inhibition (assessed by CCTT-2 and CCTT Interference Index). These findings may be of clinical relevance since difficulties in EFs and prosodic deficits are characteristic of many neurodevelopmental disorders. Future studies are needed to further investigate the nature of the relationship between impaired prosody and executive (dys)function.

Atypical preference for infant-directed speech as an early marker of autism spectrum disorders?: a literature review and directions for further research

ABSTRACT Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) refer to a complex group of neurodevelopmental disorders causing difficulties with communication and interpersonal relationships, as well as restricted and repetitive behaviours and interests. As early identification, diagnosis, and intervention provide better long-term outcomes, early markers of ASD have gained increased research attention. This review examines evidence that auditory processing enhanced by social interest, in particular auditory preference of speech directed towards infants and young children (i.e. infant-directed speech – IDS), may be an early marker of risk for ASD. Although this review provides evidence for IDS preference as, indeed, a potential early marker of ASD, the explanation for differences in IDS processing among children with ASD versus other children remains unclear, as are the implications of these impairments for later social-communicative development. Therefore, it is crucial to explore atypicalities in IDS processing early on development and to understand whether preferential listening to specific types of speech sounds in the first years of life may help to predict the impairments in social and language development.