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Distinct Pause Patterns in Autism: Effects of Sex and Conversational Context in French-Speaking (Pre)adolescents
Marie Belenger1, Charlotte Dumont1, Philippine Geelhand1
1ACTE, LaDisco and ULB Neuroscience Institute, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium.
Purpose:
We investigated sex differences in the production of pauses in autistic (pre-)adolescents in two conversational contexts: a monologue and an interactive discussion.
Method:
This study included 107 French-speaking participants (Mage = 12.35 years), 49 autistic (22 females, 27 males) and 58 nonautistic (30 females, 28 males). Speech was elicited from two tasks: a get-to-know conversation and a narrative task. We analyzed the production of filled "uh" and "um" pauses as well as the production of unusually long silent pauses (> 700 ms).
Results:
Autistic participants produced more silent pauses than nonautistic participants, but no significant group differences were found for filled pauses. Filled pauses occurred more frequently in the get-to-know than in the narratives, which underscores their pragmatic functions. No significant effect of sex was found.
Conclusions:
Autism diagnosis and conversational context, but not sex, influenced pause productions. Our results also highlight the importance of cross-linguistic studies, including in autism research, to avoid the overgeneralization of findings from English-speaking populations.
Supplemental Material:
https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.32078268.
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