Abstract

Autism spectrum disorder involves persistent difficulties in social communication. Although these difficulties affect both verbal and nonverbal communication, there are no quantitative behavioral studies to date investigating the cross-modal coordination of verbal and nonverbal communication in autism. The objective of the present study was to characterize the dynamic relation between speech production and facial expression in children with autism and to establish how face-directed gaze modulates this cross-modal coordination. In a dynamic mimicry task, experiment participants watched and repeated neutral and emotional spoken sentences with accompanying facial expressions. Analysis of audio and motion capture data quantified cross-modal coordination between simultaneous speech production and facial expression. Whereas neurotypical children produced emotional sentences with strong cross-modal …

Date

December 4, 2019

Authors

Tanner Sorensen, Emily Zane, Tiantian Feng, Shrikanth Narayanan, Ruth Grossman

Journal

Scientific reports

Volume

9

Issue

1

Pages

18301

Publisher

Nature Publishing Group UK