Abstract

There is a paucity of research regarding autistic adults, yet as autistic individuals grow to adulthood, they are often met with several barriers because of their differences from the neurotypical (NT) population. Given the demands of adult social interaction, some of the social difficulties experienced by autistic adults are likely related to emotion processing and prosody function. With sensory processing differences added as a diagnostic criterion for autism within the last decade, an investigation into its relationship with emotional processing, another marked difficulty for this population, is warranted. There are logical connections between sensory processing, emotion, and prosody, such that an individual is required to detect the slight variations in pitch, stress, and pausing of prosody and have a typical and functional understanding of emotion to be able to comprehend the full meaning behind the prosodic cues of a speaker. Additionally, a speaker needs to understand these same sensory and emotional aspects in order to express typical prosody and have their full message, spoken and unspoken, be received by the listener. Thus, we hypothesized that there would be positive relationships between emotion, sensory processing, and prosody difficulties, and that sensory processing would act as a mediator between emotion and prosody. This study involved an online survey (n = 639) and an in-person component (n = 51) of NT and autistic young adults aged 18-27. Participants completed questionnaires and behavioral measures related to emotion, sensory processing, and prosody. Results revealed positive relationships between the three constructs and that sensory processing (especially auditory processing) was, indeed, a mediator between emotion and prosody. An exploratory analysis between males and females revealed no difference in prosody perception or production but differences in the role emotion plays in the above model between the sexes. This study provides a potential bridge between the NT and autistic communities and clinical implications for working with autistic individuals or those who express autistic traits.

Degree

College and Department

David O. McKay School of Education; Communication Disorders

Rights

https://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/