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ERIC Number: EJ1465400
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-Feb
Pages: 16
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1362-3613
EISSN: EISSN-1461-7005
Available Date: 0000-00-00
Atypical Vocal Imitation of Speech and Song in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Evidence from Mandarin Speakers
Li Wang1,2; Peter Q. Pfordresher3; Cunmei Jiang4; Fang Liu2
Autism: The International Journal of Research and Practice, v29 n2 p408-423 2025
Vocal imitation in English-speaking autistic individuals has been shown to be atypical. Speaking a tone language such as Mandarin facilitates vocal imitation skills among non-autistic individuals, yet no studies have examined whether this effect holds for autistic individuals. To address this question, we compared vocal imitation of speech and song between 33 autistic Mandarin speakers and 30 age-matched non-autistic peers. Participants were recorded while imitating 40 speech and song stimuli with varying pitch and duration patterns. Acoustic analyses showed that autistic participants imitated relative pitch (but not absolute pitch) less accurately than non-autistic participants for speech, whereas for song the two groups performed comparably on both absolute and relative pitch matching. Regarding duration matching, autistic participants imitated relative duration (inter-onset interval between consecutive notes/syllables) less accurately than non-autistic individuals for both speech and song, while their lower performance on absolute duration matching of the notes/syllables was presented only in the song condition. These findings indicate that experience with tone languages does not mitigate the challenges autistic individuals face in imitating speech and song, highlighting the importance of considering the domains and features of investigation and individual differences in cognitive abilities and language backgrounds when examining imitation in autism.
SAGE Publications. 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320. Tel: 800-818-7243; Tel: 805-499-9774; Fax: 800-583-2665; e-mail: journals@sagepub.com; Web site: https://sagepub-com.bibliotheek.ehb.be
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: China
Identifiers - Assessments and Surveys: Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule; Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test; Raven Progressive Matrices
Grant or Contract Numbers: 1848930
Author Affiliations: 1The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China; 2University of Reading, UK; 3University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, USA; 4Shanghai Normal University, China