高功能自閉症兒童情緒語調之理解與表達

Abstract

本研究旨在探討高功能自閉症兒童的情緒語調理解與表達能力，從正確率、反應時間和聲學特徵了解其能力。研究採取實驗組和對照組差異比較的實驗設計，研究對象為大台北地區7~11歲之高功能自閉症組兒童21位與生理年齡、性別與非語文智力分數配對之一般發展組兒童21位。實驗內容包括情緒語調理解作業與情緒語調表達作業，理解作業以E-prime2.0呈現對話情境，讓受試者按鍵反應判斷所聽到語句之情緒類別，記錄其正確率與反應時間；表達作業由不熟悉的評分者對兩組兒童表達之目標語句進行情緒類別的判斷與情緒表達清晰度的評分，並以聲學分析軟體分析兩組兒童口語表達之情緒語調聲學參數。研究結果顯示：一般發展組兒童對情緒語調的理解正確率，優於高功能自閉症組兒童；高功能自閉症組所需的正確反應時間，多於一般發展組兒童。兩組兒童的情緒語調表達正確率並沒有顯著差異；但一般發展組的情緒語調表達清晰程度顯著優於高功能自閉症組。兩組兒童在情緒語調表達之「時間長度」、「平均基本頻率」、「基本頻率範圍」、「平均振幅」等聲學特性無顯著差異，但高功能自閉症組的「振幅範圍」顯著較一般發展組小。綜合研究結果來看，高功能自閉症組兒童對他人情緒語調的理解表現較同年齡兒童弱，在情緒語調的表達清晰程度上也較差，然而因表達作業難度的因素，本研究並未發現兩組兒童在情緒語調的表達正確率上有顯著差異。The purposes of this study were to examine the perception and production abilities of emotional intonation in children with High-Functioning Autism. Twenty-one Mandarin-peaking children with high-functiong Autism (HFA) between 7 and 11 years of age and 21 age and noverbal IQ-matched children with typical development (TD) participanted in ths study. Their performance on the perception and production of emotional intonation were compared. The perception of emotional intonation task used the psychology software E-prime2.0 to present the testing procedure and record the accuracy rate and reaction time when individual subjects were asked to identify the emotoiion type of each target utterance. The production of emotional intonation task collected individual subjects’ speech expression of target utterances, and then a group of naïve listeners were asked to identify the emotoiion type of each tarhget utterance they heard. In addition, acoustic analysis were employed to explore the acaoustic parameters of emotional intonation expressed by the two groups of children. Results demonstrated that there were significant between-group differences in perception and production performance of emotional intonation, including the accuracy rate and reaction time of identification and the clarity of emotional production. However, there were no significant group differences in the accuracy rate of production of emotional intonation between two groups of children. The group difference has only shown in the aspect of intensity range, in which children seem to use smaller rage of intensity during the emotional expression. In summary, children with HFA performed poorer than the control group on the perception and production of emotional intonation. However, due to the high level of task difficulity in the production task, it is hard to conclude the extent of difficulties in the emotional intonation production in children with HFA.