Spaciousness as an acoustic measure of prosody in autistic children

Author, Researcher, or Creator

• Boram Kim, Lehman College City University of New York
• Rhiannon Luyster, Emerson College
• Jason Bishop, The Graduate Center, City University of New York

Affiliation of Author, Researcher, or Creator

School of Communication

Other Affiliation Information

Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, Lehman College, City University of New York; Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders, Emerson College; Linguistics Program, Graduate Center, City University of New York; Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences Program, Graduate Center, City University of New York; Linguistics Program, College of Staten Island, City University of New York

Department

Communication Sciences and Disorders; Communication Studies

Author(s)

Boram Kim, Rhiannon Luyster & Jason Bishop

Resource Type

Article

Publication, Publisher or Distributor

JASA Express Letters, AIP Publishing

Publication Date

Fall 10-8-2026

Brief Description

Distinctive prosody has been reported in autism, yet acoustic studies have yielded inconsistent findings, particularly for F0-related measures. Two dynamic measures, spaciousness (magnitude of pitch excursions) and wiggliness (rate of pitch-direction changes), offer alternatives, but spaciousness has not yet been applied to English-speaking autistic children. The present study therefore compared acoustic characteristics of prosody from autistic and language-skill matched nonautistic children (age 3–7) using spaciousness, wiggliness, F0 measures (mean, standard deviation, and range), and speech rate. Linear mixed-effects models revealed that only spaciousness showed significant group differences, and these differences were independent of utterance length. Replication in larger samples is warranted.

Keywords

Human voice, Prosody, Speech development, Vocal folds, Occlusion effect, Speech analysis, Articulographic system

Recommended Citation

Boram Kim, Rhiannon Luyster, Jason Bishop; Spaciousness as an acoustic measure of prosody in autistic children. JASA Express Lett. 1 October 2026; 6 (10): 105202. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0046854

Preferred Citation Style

APA

License Agreement

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