Contrastive intonation in autism: The effect of speaker- and listener-perspective

To indicate that a referent is minimally distinguishable from a previously mentioned antecedent speakers can use contrastive intonation. Commonly, the antecedent is shared with the listener. However, in natural discourse interlocutors may not share all information. In a previous study we found that typically developing speakers can account for such perspective differences when producing contrastive intonation. It is known that in autism the ability to account for another’s mental state is impaired and prosody is atypical. In the current study we investigate to what extent speakers with an autism spectrum disorder account for their listeners when producing contrastive intonation. Results show that typical and autistic speakers produce contrastive intonation similarly although both groups differ with respect to other aspects of prosody.