Abstract
The present study pursued hypotheses relevant to prosodic abnormalities in the expressive language of autistic children. An operant paradigm was employed to measure the intrinsic reinforcing value of a verbally presented story for autistic, mentally retarded, and normal groups controlling for chronological age and performance mental age. Results suggested that both autistic and mentally retarded children could perceive prosodic cues, although only mentally retarded children are able to use them in their expressive language. It was also suggested that linguistic stimuli may have less intrinsic reinforcement value for autistic and mentally retarded children than for normal children. Implications for future research and treatment were discussed.
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This paper was supported in part by grants # MH 30897 and MCH #927. Computing assistance was obtained from the UCLA Health Sciences Computing Facility, sponsored by NIMH Research Resources Grant RR-3. The authors wish to thank Diana Van Lancker for her evaluation of the stimuli used in this study, and Debbie Mochizuki and Laurie Pang for their help in the later stages of preparation of this manuscript.
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Frankel, F., Simmons, J.Q. & Richey, V.E. Reward value of prosodic features of language for autistic, mentally retarded, and normal children. J Autism Dev Disord 17, 103–113 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01487263
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01487263