Filled Pauses Produced by Autistic Adults Differ in Prosodic Realisation, but not Rate or Lexical Type

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Psychology
• Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Background:

• Filled pauses are common speech elements that signal cognitive processing during conversation.
• Research on filled pauses in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is limited, particularly concerning their prosodic realization.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the rate, lexical type, and intonational realization of filled pauses in conversations between autistic adults and non-autistic adults.
• To compare filled pause usage between autistic and non-autistic individuals.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of a corpus of semi-spontaneous speech from homogeneous pairs of autistic and non-autistic adults.
• Statistical analysis using Bayesian modeling to examine filled pause characteristics.
• Focus on rate, lexical type ('uhm' vs. 'uh'), and prosodic contours (rising, level, falling).

Main Results:

• Identical rates of filled pauses were observed in both autistic and non-autistic adults.
• Both groups showed a preference for the nasal filled pause 'uhm' over 'uh'.
• A significant group difference emerged in the intonational realization: non-autistic speakers used a higher proportion of level pitch contours in filled pauses compared to autistic speakers.

Conclusions:

• While rate and lexical type of filled pauses are comparable between autistic and non-autistic adults, intonational realization differs.
• This study is the first to analyze filled pause intonation in ASD and in conversations between autistic adults.
• Findings highlight novel differences in speech prosody in ASD and suggest avenues for future research.