Prosody or “melody in speech” in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is often perceived as atypical. This study examined perception and production of statements and questions in 84 children, adolescents and adults with and without ASD, as well as participants’ pitch direction discrimination thresholds. The results suggested that the abilities to discriminate (in both speech and music conditions), identify, and imitate statement-question intonation were intact in individuals with ASD across age cohorts. Sensitivity to pitch direction predicted performance on intonation processing in both groups, who also exhibited similar developmental changes. These findings provide evidence for shared mechanisms in pitch processing between speech and music, as well as associations between low- and high-level pitch processing and between perception and production of pitch.

自闭症谱系障碍 (ASD) 中的韵律或“言语中的旋律”通常被认为是非典型的。这项研究检查了 84 名患有和不患有 ASD 的儿童、青少年和成人对陈述和问题的感知和产生，以及参与者的俯仰方向辨别阈值。结果表明，跨年龄组的 ASD 个体的辨别能力（在语音和音乐条件下）、识别和模仿陈述问题的语调是完整的。对音高方向的敏感性预测了两组的语调处理表现，他们也表现出类似的发展变化。这些发现为语音和音乐之间音高处理的共享机制提供了证据，