Perceiving and Producing Prosody: Perspectives and Insights from Autistic Adults

Purpose: Prosodic features of speech (e.g., pitch, intensity, and timing) are commonly used to convey meaning, emotion, and pragmatic intent. While prosody production and perception in autism has been widely studied, results are inconclusive. To our knowledge, existing literature has not directly included autistic voices to inform research approaches. The purpose of the present qualitative study is to better understand autistic perspectives about prosody in order to guide future research and intervention.Methods: A focus group was conducted to explore how three autistic people produce/perceive prosody. Autistic perspectives were extracted and summarized using inductive thematic analyses.Results: Five themes were identified across individual and interpersonal levels, with two additional themes related to context and strategies. At the individual level, themes highlight several differences in the prosody production/perception of autistic people, including that prosody may be more effortful and require increased awareness. At the interpersonal level, themes suggest that listeners may have varying degrees of understanding of autistic individuals’ prosody and that all communication partners can be more explicit to reduce communication breakdowns. Related to context, social and physical environments impact prosody production/perception. The final theme highlights strategies autistic people use to produce/perceive prosody, and how these strategies can be used by all communication partners.Conclusions: Thematic analyses suggest that producing and perceiving prosody may be more effortful for autistic people at individual and interpersonal levels and may depend on additional contextual factors. Insights may inform research and clinical directions related to prosody and autism.