PURPOSE: To investigate whether children with ASD are able to use of prosodic cues in the understanding of language. Language has a melody (prosody) which helps with the understanding the meaning of utterances. Prosody is often an area which is often not targeted in therapy in individuals with ASD, yet it could be a main barrier in social acceptance; prosodic deficits are often lifelong even when other areas of language improve.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
WHO DO WE NEED: Individuals over the age of 8 with a formal diagnosis of Autism Spectrum and no other diagnosed language disorders.<\/p>\n
PROCEDURE: This study will involve the participating children undertaking 2 assessments and a child friendly Artificial Grammar Learning task (AGL).<\/p>\n
In the AGL task children will be asked to listen to the utterances, which are said by a magician who is learning his spells. After this, they see another magician who has also been learning the same spells and who is going to try them out. The child will be asked to say whether the spell would work or not. Children will not be given any feedback; they will be praised for their efforts. This should take approximately 40 minutes.<\/p>\n
This application has been reviewed by the University Research Ethics Committee and has been given a favourable ethical opinion for conduct.<\/p>\n
If you want to join and help us, please contact:<\/p>\n
Student researcher:<\/p>\n
Kimberley Elms<\/p>\n
K.A.Elms@student.reading.ac.uk<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Project supervisor:<\/p>\n
Dr Vesna Stojanovik<\/p>\n
v.stojanovik@reading.ac.uk<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"