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Adults with Asperger syndrome are less sensitive to intonation than control persons when listening to speech

  • Original Research Article
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Culture and Brain

Abstract

In conversation, speakers typically draw attention to items that are meant to be informative by pronouncing the words referring to these items in a particular way. These words have a distinct intonation, and are accented—typically involving a rise or fall in vocal pitch on the stressed syllable. Listeners use this information to know which part of the sentence is new, and therefore worthy of attention. In a perception study, adults with Asperger syndrome (AS) and a group of control persons were instructed to rate the informativeness of words, based on how they sounded. The AS group showed a reduced sensitivity to intonation and subsequently based their judgement less on the way the word was pronounced and more on word frequency and semantic features of the words themselves. This finding is in concordance with a general reduced sensitivity to non-verbal cues in social encounters and to a propensity towards literal interpretation in the group of persons with AS.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Christine Röhr for making available the materials used for experiments reported in Röhr and Baumann (2011) and Baumann et al. (2015). We would also like to thank Bodo Winter for help with the statistical analysis and Francesco Cangemi for discussion of the implications. All errors are the responsibility of the authors. This work was partly funded by the German Research Council as part of University of Cologne’s Excellent Research Support Program awarded to Martine Grice (UoC Emerging Group, ZUK 81/1) and to Kai Vogeley (UoC Forum). Grant sponsor: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Excellent Research Programme, UoC Emerging Groups (Grice: ZUK81/1) UoC Forum (Vogeley).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Phonetics, Institute of Linguistics, University of Cologne, Herbert-Lewin-Str. 6, 50931, Cologne, Germany

    Martine Grice & Martina Krüger

  2. Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Cologne, Cologne, Germany

    Kai Vogeley

  3. Research Center Juelich, Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Cognitive Neuroscience (INM-3), Juelich, Germany

    Kai Vogeley

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  1. Martine Grice
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  2. Martina Krüger
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Correspondence to Martine Grice.

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Appendix

Appendix

Examples of test sentences used to elicit the speech materials (in bold), test words underlined. Subjects listened to the sentences in bold only.

(a1) Test word new: „Was hätten Sie gerne?“ „Ich nehme die Banane mit.“, antwortet Thomas dem Obsthändler. Normalerweise ernährt er sich sehr ungesund und isst zwischendurch ständig Süßigkeiten. Außerdem treibt er fast nie Sport und wenn doch, dann am liebsten Minigolf.

(“What would you like?” “I’ll take the banana with me”, says Thomas to the fruit merchant. He usually eats very unhealthily and he is always eating sweets between meals. He hardly ever plays sport, and if he does he prefers mini golf.)

(a2) Test word new: „Was machen wir?“ „Wir rufen die Romana an.“, antwortet Tina ihrer Freundin. Beide sind auf der Suche nach einer guten Russisch-Lehrerin. Weil sie die Kultur dieses Landes lieben, werden sie im nächsten Semester dort studieren. Englisch ist allerdings die einzige Fremdsprache, die die beiden bisher beherrschen.

(“What are we going to do?” “ We will give Romana a call.” , Tina answers her friend. They are looking for a good Russian teacher. They love the culture of this country, which is why they plan to spend a semester there. But so far, English is the only foreign language that both of them have a good command of.)

(b1) Test word given: Thomas hat gerade auf dem Markt eine Banane gekauft. Er steckt sich die Banane ein. In Zukunft möchte er sich viel gesünder ernähren.

(Thomas has just bought a banana at the market. He puts the banana in his pocket . In the future he wants to eat much more healthily.)

(b2) Test word given: Tina und ihre Freundin möchten bei Romana Russisch lernen. Sie sprechen die Romana an. Mit ihrer Hilfe werden sie die Sprache sicher schnell lernen.

(Tina and her friend would like to take Russian lessons with Romana. They approach Romana. With her help they will surely learn the language in no time.)

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Grice, M., Krüger, M. & Vogeley, K. Adults with Asperger syndrome are less sensitive to intonation than control persons when listening to speech. Cult. Brain 4, 38–50 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40167-016-0035-6

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