Treating Expressive Affective Prosody in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

Although prosodic deficits have been reported to occur with many different populations, little published research addresses treatment options for these deficits. This study was designed to examine one treatment’s impact, the six-step imitative approach, on the expressive affective prosody of an adolescent with autism who had average intelligence and good receptive/expressive language skills. As this approach has been successfully utilized in treating the affective prosody deficits in adults with acquired deficits, it was hypothesized that it could also be effective in treating individuals with prosody deficits associated with developmental disorders. A case study is presented to demonstrate the changes associated with the six-step imitative approach on the acoustic (fundamental frequency [F0], duration, and intensity) and the perceptual characteristics of speech. This study suggests that the six-step imitative approach may be beneficial in treating some expressive prosodic deficits in children with autism.