Nonlinguistic Vocalizations in Autism: Acoustic Cry Analysis in Early Infancy

自闭症的非语言发声：婴儿早期的声学哭泣分析

• 批准号: 7585958
• 负责人: STEPHEN J SHEINKOPF
• 金额: $ 7.33万
• 依托单位: WOMEN AND INFANTS HOSPITAL-RHODE ISLAND
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-09-30 至 2010-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7585958
• 关键词: Acoustics; Adult; Affective; Age; Age-Months; Applied Research; Attention; Autistic Disorder; Behavioral; Biosocial; Characteristics; Child; Classification; Clinical; Communication; Communication impairment; Condition; Control Groups; Crying; Data; Development; Developmental Delay Disorders; Diagnosis; Diagnostic; Disease; Disruption; Early identification; Emotional; Frequencies; Gender; Gestational Age; Home environment; Infant; Intervention; Language Development; Lead; Life; Literature; Loudness; Measurement; Measures; Methods; Modeling; Nature; Newborn Infant; Parents; Pattern; Phonation; Plant Roots; Population; Production; Property; Public Health; Range; Rate; Research; Sampling; Screening procedure; Signal Transduction; Signs and Symptoms; Social Interaction; Speech; Symptoms; System; Systems Analysis; Time; Videotape; Videotape Recording; autism spectrum disorder; design; early childhood; improved; infancy; named group; social; social communication; theories; tool; vocalization

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Autism is associated with disruptions in vocal production and emotional signaling. Previous research has identified atypicalities in prosodic qualities of speech and vocalizations in children with autism. Such nonverbal aspects of vocal production can be measured in even very young infants through the measurement of the prosodic qualities of cry. From a biosocial model, infant cry can be seen as both a nonspecific indicator of neurophysiologic functioning and as serving important opportunities for dyadic social interaction in the early months of life. Thus, atypicalities in cry production may reflect disruptions in the development of both vocal production and emotional signaling. To date, there has been very little systematic research on vocal production in infants later diagnosed with autism, and no study has yet to investigate cry characteristics in this population. The identification of atypical cry characteristics in autism would help to improve efforts to identify autism in infancy. This study will measure the acoustic properties of cry from early home videotapes in children with autism. Using a variety of means of publicity, we will solicit home videotapes from parents of children with autism spectrum disorders. Analyses will be limited to recording of infants from the first 6 months of life. Portions of these vocal samples that contain spontaneous cries will be selected and analyzed for a range of acoustic characteristics. We will compare the acoustic features of cry from children with autism to a group of non-autistic infants selected to match the autistic infants in terms of age at time of recording as well as general setting characteristics of the videotape recording. We will utilize a cry analysis system that has been used in a wide range of studies of typical and special populations. A unique characteristic of the cry analysis system proposed for use in this study is that it was designed to model the qualities of the vocal tract unique to young infants. This study will have implications for both applied research on early screening, as well as research on the origins and developmental course of communication and vocal signaling in autism. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE This research is highly relevant to both early identification and intervention for children with autism. By identifying atypical aspects of cry in infancy associated with this disorder, this research will aide in the development of more sensitive and specific screening and diagnostic tools for use in infancy. In addition, this research will improve our understanding of the roots and course of communication impairments in autism.

描述（由申请人提供）：自闭症与人声产生和情感信号的中断有关。先前的研究已经确定了自闭症儿童的言语和发声的韵律品质的非典型性。即使在非常年轻的婴儿中，可以通过测量韵律的哭泣品质来衡量声乐产生的这种非语言方面。从生物社会模型中，婴儿的哭声既可以看作是神经生理功能的非特异性指标，又是在生命早期为二元社会互动提供重要的机会。因此，哭泣产量的非典型性可能反映了声音产生和情感信号传导的发展中断。迄今为止，对后来被诊断为自闭症的婴儿的声音产生的系统研究很少，尚未研究该人群的哭泣特征。自闭症中非典型哭泣特征的识别将有助于改善识别婴儿期自闭症的努力。这项研究将衡量自闭症儿童早期家庭录像带中哭泣的声学特性。使用各种宣传方式，我们将征求自闭症谱系障碍儿童父母的家庭录像带。分析将仅限于生命前6个月的婴儿记录。将选择包含自发哭声的这些声音样本的一部分，并分析一系列声学特征。我们将比较自闭症儿童的哭泣的声学特征与一群从记录时的年龄以及录像带记录的一般设置特征来匹配自闭症婴儿的一组非自闭症婴儿。我们将利用已在典型和特殊人群的广泛研究中使用的哭泣分析系统。在这项研究中提出的哭泣分析系统的独特特征是，它旨在模拟年轻婴儿独有的声带的质量。这项研究将对早期筛查的应用研究以及对自闭症的沟通和声音信号的起源和发育过程的研究有影响。公共卫生相关性这项研究与自闭症儿童的早期识别和干预高度相关。通过确定与该疾病相关的婴儿期哭泣的非典型方面，这项研究将有助于开发更敏感，更特定的筛查和诊断工具以供婴儿期使用。此外，这项研究将提高我们对自闭症中沟通障碍的根源和过程的理解。