Prosody comparison table
Natalie Lyon
Article Citation
Demographics
Other Relevant
Instruments
Travis, J., & Geiger, M.
(2010). The effectiveness
of the Picture Exchange
Communication System
(PECS) for children with
autism spectrum disorder
(ASD): A South African
pilot study. Child
Language Teaching and
Therapy, 26(1), 39-59.
Retrieved from
http://clt.sagepub.com/con
tent/26/1/39.short
2 male children
ages 9 years old,
both diagnosed
with autism,
specifically
Pervasive
Developmental
Disorder Autism.
Attended special
needs school.
Presented with
some verbal
language but
limited
intentional
communication.
Treatment consisted
of using the Picture
Exchange
Communication
System (PECS),
with aim of
measuring effects
on complexity of
verbal utterances,
communicative
profile, and
pragmatic skills
Bellon-Harn, M., Harn,
W. E., & Watson, G. D.
(2007). Targeting prosody
in an eight-year-old child
with high-functioning
autism during an
interactive approach to
therapy. Child Language
Teaching and Therapy, 23,
157-179. Retrieved from
http://clt.sagepub.com/con
tent/23/2/157.full.pdf
1 male child age
8 years old
diagnosed with
HighFunctioning
Autism. Hearing
in normal limits,
below-normal
scores on
expressive and
receptive
language test.
Interventions
included 6 sessions
of interactive
approach to therapy
(INT), focusing on
themes of interest
to the child, used to
operationalize
atypical prosodic
behavior, and 10
sessions of explicit
strategies (EX)
within an
interactive
approach, including
auditory, visual,
Results
Effects of PECS training
on pragmatic skills were
measured by comparison
of a pre and post-training
evaluation. Both
participants showed
increases in a variety of
pragmatic skills,
including use of
instrumental, regulatory,
expressive, and
informative utterances,
more developed ability to
make requests, gain
attention, and share
feelings, although these
gains were shown in
productive pragmatic
measures.
Results suggest that this
method works well for the
child in the case study,
but improvement may be
limited to others with
similar characteristics that
made him receptive to the
intervention. The
interactive approach alone
was not able to achieve
sufficient progress in
prosody (although it
seemed helpful in other
areas), but the addition of
the explicit component
focusing on prosody
and tactile
feedback,
modelling,
discrimination, and
metalinguistics.
yielded significant gains
in prosody skills,
specifically in the target
area for the participant,
correct timing for
lengthening and pausing.
The training and
measurement was
productive pragmatics.
Matsuda, S., &
4 male children
Interventions
All 4 participants learned
Yamamoto, J. (2013).
between ages 3
method was crossto match the affective
Intervention for increasing and 7 years old
modal matching-to- prosody of a single word
the comprehension of
with ASD, 3 of
sample (MTS)
from their teacher’s voice
affective prosody in
which were
procedures to
to facial expression visual
children with autism
diagnosed with
match affective
cards for 4 different
spectrum disorders.
autistic disorder prosody with facial emotions, happy,
Research in Autism
and one with
expression. Stimuli surprised, angry, and sad.
Spectrum Disorders, 7,
PDD-NOS. All
provided was visual All 4 children were also
938- 946. Retrieved from
attended regular pictures of facial
able to generalize the
http://www.sciencedirect.c classrooms.
expression and
prosody matching with
om/science/article/pii/S17 Mental age range auditory live
the voice of an individual
50946713000627
estimated for the production of target not used during training.
group is between affective prosody
The prosody perception
2-6 years. The
using a single word. improvement was not
language of the
found during simple
children and of
repetition selection
the study itself
training, instead requiring
was Japanese.
differential feedback
before the children
showed improvement.
This showed
improvement in receptive
pragmatics.
Hoque, M. E., Lane, el
8 children
Divided in to two
The study showed a great
Kaliouby, R., Goodwin,
diagnosed with
groups, both groups deal more engagement,
M., & Picard, R. W.
autism (5 male
baseline was
interest, cooperation, and
(2009). Exploring Speech and 3 female)
measured before
better mood from the
Therapy Games with
and 1 child
they underwent 2
participants in the
Children on the Autism
diagnosed with
weeks of traditional computerized therapy
Spectrum Paper presented Down
speech therapy
versus the traditional
at the 10th Annual
Conference of the
International Speech
Communication
Association, Brighton UK.
Retrieved from
http://hdl.handle.net/1721.
1/56580
Syndrome. Ages
ranged from 819 years old.
Targeted speech
goal varied by
participant—for
the participants
with autism,
prosodic features
of timing and
volume, and
turn-taking was
target for one
participant.
intervention, then a
group used
computerized
speech therapy
while another used
traditional for an
additional 2 weeks.
After evaluation for
changes, the groups
switched
intervention styles
for another two
week trial before
another postevaluation. The
traditional speech
therapy consisted of
3-4 word sentences
used as prompts,
with feedback
given by the
therapist for
incorrect prosody.
The computerized
version used the
same method, but
with feedback
given by a
computer game
rather than the
therapist.
version. Prosody skills
were noted from the pilot
studies as improving more
so in the computerized
trials than the traditional
trials. For example, two
participants were shown
to have much fewer pitch
breaks in conversation
during their natural
speech and while
attending to the computer,
indicating gains in control
of pitch. Although both
receptive and productive
pragmatics were
discussed initially, it
would appear only
productive pragmatics
were the targets of
measurement.