This work is a part of the project to study reflecting emotional, psychophysiological and psychoneurological states in voice and speech features of children (the Head of the project – Lyakso E., 2018-2020). The goal of this study is to determine specific features of speech in children aged 6-7 years with autism spectrum disorders and with Down syndrome.
In the study, participants were 30 children aged 6-7 years: with autism spectrum disorders (ASD, n=10), with Down syndrome (DS, n=10), and typically developing (TD, n=10). The method used in the work was developed in the Child Speech Research Group (Lyakso et al., 2012). The acoustic spectrographic, perceptual phonetic analysis for speech, and statistical analysis of data were used.
It has been found that TD children are characterized by maximal values of vowel articulation index (VAI) for stressed vowels; children with ASD – by high values of pitch, pitch variability of words and stressed vowels from words, squares of formant triangles of stressed vowels and VAI for unstressed vowels, non-formation of some consonant phonemes; children with DS – by high values of duration of words and stressed vowels from words, low values of VAI for stressed vowels, non-formation of some consonant phonemes and presence of phonemes uncharacteristic for the Russian language. The connection between values of VAI for stressed vowels and children’s diagnoses has been revealed – children with DS has lower values of VAI vs. TD and peers with ASD.
Acoustic features of speech which are specific for TD children, children with ASD and with DS aged 6-7 years have been defined. The obtained data can be used for teaching children with atypical development and creating computer programs.
The study is financially supported by the Russian Science Foundation №18-18-00063.