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ERIC Number: EJ1462971
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025
Pages: 16
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1092-4388
EISSN: EISSN-1558-9102
Available Date: 0000-00-00
Vocal and Facial Behavior during Affect Production in Autism Spectrum Disorder
Hardik Kothare; Vikram Ramanarayanan; Michael Neumann; Jackson Liscombe; Vanessa Richter; Linnea Lampinen; Alison Bai; Cristian Preciado; Katherine Brogan; Carly Demopoulos
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, v68 n2 p419-434 2025
Purpose: We investigate the extent to which automated audiovisual metrics extracted during an affect production task show statistically significant differences between a cohort of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing controls. Method: Forty children with ASD and 21 neurotypical controls interacted with a multimodal conversational platform with a virtual agent, Tina, who guided them through tasks prompting facial and vocal communication of four emotions--happy, angry, sad, and afraid--under conditions of high and low verbal and social cognitive task demands. Results: Individuals with ASD exhibited greater standard deviation of the fundamental frequency of the voice with the minima and maxima of the pitch contour occurring at an earlier time point as compared to controls. The intensity and voice quality of emotional speech were also different between the two cohorts in certain conditions. Additionally, facial metrics capturing the acceleration of the lower lip, lip width, eye opening, and vertical displacement of the eyebrows were also important markers to distinguish between children with ASD and neurotypical controls. Both facial and speech metrics performed well above chance in group classification accuracy. Conclusion: Speech acoustic and facial metrics associated with affect production were effective in distinguishing between children with ASD and neurotypical controls.
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. 2200 Research Blvd #250, Rockville, MD 20850. Tel: 301-296-5700; Fax: 301-296-8580; e-mail: slhr@asha.org; Web site: http://jslhr.pubs.asha.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: California (San Francisco)
Grant or Contract Numbers: K23DC016637; R01DC019167
Author Affiliations: N/A