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: 7697108
• 负责人: STEPHEN J SHEINKOPF
• 金额: $ 7.42万
• 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 2011-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7697108
• 关键词: Acoustics; Adult; Affective; Age; Age-Months; Applied Research; Attention; Autistic Disorder; Behavioral; Biosocial; Characteristics; Child; Classification; Clinical; Communication; Communication impairment; Control Groups; Crying; Data; Development; Developmental Delay Disorders; Diagnosis; Diagnostic; Disease; 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; 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; public health relevance; 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）：自闭症与发声和情绪信号的破坏有关。先前的研究已经发现自闭症儿童言语和发声的韵律质量存在非典型性。即使是很小的婴儿，也可以通过测量哭泣的韵律质量来测量发声的非语言方面。从生物社会模型来看，婴儿哭泣既可以被视为神经生理功能的非特异性指标，也可以被视为生命最初几个月进行二元社会互动的重要机会。因此，哭泣产生的非典型性可能反映了发声和情绪信号发展的中断。迄今为止，对后来被诊断为自闭症的婴儿发声的系统研究很少，也没有研究调查该人群的哭泣特征。识别自闭症的非典型哭泣特征将有助于改进婴儿自闭症的识别工作。这项研究将测量自闭症儿童早期家庭录像中哭泣的声学特性。通过多种宣传方式，向自闭症谱系障碍儿童家长征集家庭录像。分析仅限于婴儿出生后 6 个月内的记录。这些声音样本中包含自发哭声的部分将被选择并分析一系列声学特征。我们将比较自闭症儿童与一组非自闭症婴儿的哭声特征，这些非自闭症婴儿在录制时的年龄以及录像带录制的一般背景特征方面与自闭症婴儿相匹配。我们将利用一种哭泣分析系统，该系统已广泛用于典型和特殊人群的研究。本研究中提出使用的哭声分析系统的一个独特特征是，它旨在模拟小婴儿独特的声道质量。这项研究将对早期筛查的应用研究以及自闭症沟通和声音信号的起源和发展过程的研究产生影响。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。通过识别与这种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灵敏、更具体的婴儿期筛查和诊断工具。此外，这项研究将提高我们对自闭症沟通障碍的根源和过程的理解。