Autistimikirjon poikien intonaation käyttö kysymys- ja kerrontavuoroissa spontaanissa vuorovaikutuksessa

Autism spectrum disorder is a neurobiological developmental disorder, characterized e.g. by problems of social interaction, over-sensitity to sensory stimuli as well as restricted interests (APA, 2013). People afflicted with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often have deviant prosodic features in their speech. This article focuses on the utterance-final rising pitch and its use in questions and narrative turns in the spontaneous interaction of boys with ASD. The topic is important because even if autistic persons’ prosodic features have already been studied rather extensively, spontaneous interaction, which allows observing the use of intonation by persons with ASD, has been studied very little before.

The data originate from authentic group therapy sessions where 11–13-year-old boys afflicted with ASD talk with their therapists. Methods of phonetics and conversation analysis are used in the study.

The results of the study suggest that boys with ASD are able to use utterance-final rising pitch as an interactional resource as well as to produce and interpret correctly prosodic features that indicate finality in spontaneous interaction. They are also able to emphasize words with the help of prosodic features, call for other participants’ reactions and indicate that they take other participants into account with the help of utterance-final pitch rises. Thus, boys with ASD seem to be able to use intonation as an interactional resource, even though reciprocal interaction is generally speaking difficult for people afflicted with autism (APA, 2013).