高功能自閉症兒童情緒語調之理解與表達

Perception and Production of Emotional Intonation in Children with High-Functioning Autism

本研究目的在於了解學齡自閉症兒童對於情緒語調的理解與表達能力。研究 對象為21 名來自大臺北地區、具有口語表達能力的7 ～ 11 歲自閉症兒童，以及 21 名年齡、智商、性別配對之對照組兒童。實驗材料為在對話情境中「難過」、 「中性」、「生氣」與「快樂」四種基礎情緒類別的語句，透過錄音與編輯的程序， 分別請受試者進行情緒語調的理解與表達作業。情緒語調理解作業是以電腦程式 呈現語句，兩組兒童在聆聽後按鍵判斷目標語句的情緒類別，並由該程式記錄其 正確率與反應時間；情緒語調表達作業是由兩組受試兒童在有情境畫面的提示下 逐一說出含有不同情緒的目標語句，再由聽力正常之大學生擔任評分者，進行情 緒語調的聽辨正確性與清晰程度的評分。本研究結果發現，國小自閉症組兒童在 對話形式中的情緒語調理解正確率較一般發展組低，所需的理解反應時間也顯著 較長，其中，自閉症組兒童對於判斷和理解他人口語中所呈現的「快樂」情緒語 調的困難較為明顯。情緒語調表達的測試結果顯示，兩組兒童的情緒語調表達正 確率並沒有顯著差異，但自閉症組兒童在表達「中性」和「快樂」情緒語調的清 晰程度則顯著低於一般發展組兒童，且其情緒語調理解與表達能力之間有顯著的 正向關聯性。整體而言，自閉症兒童在情緒語調理解和情緒表達的清晰程度上較 同年齡兒童表現為弱。未來研究可以進一步探討兩組兒童在複雜情緒語調理解和 表達能力的差異，並嘗試調整作業的形式和難度，以期能更敏銳地反映個別能力 的差異。

This study aimed to examine the abilities of school-aged children with high-functioning autism (HFA) to perceive and produce emotional intonation. Twenty-one 7–11-year old Mandarin-speaking children with HFA and 21 age- and nonverbal intelligence quotient (IQ)-matched children with typical development (TD) living in Taipei and New Taipei City participated in this study. The following four categories of emotional intonation were included as the stimuli: “sad，” “angry，” “happy，” and “neutral.” For the perceptual task， utterances with emotional intonations were recorded by a professional announcer in advance and then presented to individuals through the computer with a loud speaker. During the subjective perceptual judgment tasks， individual children were asked to identify the emotional category of each target utterance (happy， sad， angry， or neutral). The sequence of emotional category of each stimulus was randomly assigned. Accuracy and reaction time for categorizing each utterance were measured using the computer software E-Prime 2.0. For the production task， individuals’ speech productions of target utterances with four emotional intonations were collected through elicited conversation settings. A group of naive adult listeners with typical hearing was also asked to identify the emotional category of each target utterance produced by the two groups of children to measure the accuracy. They were then asked to judge the clarity of each utterance accompanying the 4 categories of emotional intonations. The results demonstrated that there were significant between-group differences in the perception and production of emotional intonation， including the accuracy rate and reaction time of identification and the clarity of emotional production. Specifically， children with HFA had the most difficulty in identifying the “happy” emotion. With respect to the results of the emotional production tests， there were no significant between-group differences in the accuracy rate for the production of emotional intonation. However， children with HFA performed significantly poorly on the clarity of emotional production for “neutral” and “happy” emotions. Moreover， positive correlations were found between performance in perception and production of emotional intonation in children with HFA; however， no such correlation was found for the TD group. In summary， this study suggested that children with HFA had lower performance in perception and production of emotional intonation than age-matched controls. However， owing to the high level of difficulty in the production task， the challenges children with HFA face in producing emotional intonation should be further examined. Future studies could investigate the differences between the abilities to comprehend and produce emotional intonation by adjusting the task formats and difficulty levels.