Perception of the prosody and content of sentences in an unfamiliar language in children with autism spectrum disorders

• Low- to moderate-functioning children with autism and controls played a video game.
• Spoken sentences differing in prosody and content were presented.
• German was used to remove semantic content for both groups of children.
• Neither group showed deficits in the perception of either content or prosody.
• Both groups preferred content over prosody, but controls showed stronger preference.

Prior research suggests that children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) show atypical patterns of attention to the prosody (intonation and emotional tone of voice) and content (words) of spoken sentences. Using a discrimination-choice procedure embedded in a custom-made videogame, we examined attention to these features of sentences in 15 children with ASD (ages 5 years, 5 months–18 years) and 15 age-matched typical controls (TYP). Using an unfamiliar language (German) to remove semantics, we assessed the role of meaning in promoting attention to content over prosody. As in a previous study with English sentences, TYP children attended to content to a greater extent than children with ASD while maintaining equivalent levels of discrimination based on prosody. However, in contrast to previous results, TYP children did not show a preference for enthusiastic over grouchy tone of voice, which suggests that the unfamiliar language rendered affective valence less salient. The results confirm intact perception of prosody in children with ASD, and a more selective pattern of attention to content in TYP children.