| 1. |
- Dahlgren, Sven-Olof, 1956, et al.
(författare)
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Prosodic traits in speech produced by children with autism spectrum disorders – Perceptual and acoustic measurements
- 2018
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Ingår i: Autism & Developmental Language Impairments. - : SAGE Publications. - 2396-9415. ; 3, s. 1-10
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Autism spectrum disorder has been associated with atypical voice characteristics and prosody. In the scientific literature, four different aspects of atypical speech production in autism spectrum disorder have been highlighted; voice quality together with the prosodic aspects pitch, duration and intensity. Studies of prosody in autism spectrum disorder have almost exclusively used perceptual methods. Recently, some studies have used acoustic analyses. In these studies, it has been pointed out that the acoustic differences found are not necessarily perceived as atypical by listeners, which is why it is important to let listeners evaluate perceptual correlates to acoustic findings. The aims of this study were to use both perceptual and acoustic analyses to study prosodic production in children with autism spectrum disorder and to examine if voice and speech characteristics could be used as clinical markers for autism spectrum disorder. Method: Eleven children within normal range of intelligence diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and 11 children with typical development participated. Every child was recorded telling a story elicited with the expression, reception and recall of narrative instrument. Excerpts of one minute were extracted from the audio files creating the material underlying the perceptual ratings and in the acoustic analysis. An evaluation procedure, partly based on a standardized voice evaluation procedure developed for clinical practice in Sweden, was designed for the perceptual judgments and analysis. To capture critical prosodic variables, aspects of prosody based on characteristic features of Swedish prosody, prosodic features known to cause Swedish children with language impairment particular problems and current research of prosodic impairments in children with autism, were used as rating variables. The acoustic analysis was based on the four variables fundamental frequency (fo) average, fo range, fo variation and speech rate, together with the language production-related variable number of words per utterance. Results: In the acoustic analysis, no differences were found with regards to fo-related variables or speech rate. However, the children in the autism spectrum disorder-group produced significantly more words per utterance than the typically developing children. The perceptual analysis showed no differences between the groups. Only three children with autism spectrum disorder were correctly identified as such. The narrative ability of these children, according to scores on the narrative assessment profile, was poorer than that of the other eight children. They were also more atypical in fluency and in speech rate. Given the small sample, the results should be interpreted with caution. Conclusions and implications: The only difference in prosodic production discovered in the acoustic analysis, namely that children with autism spectrum disorder used more words per utterance than the children in the comparison group, was not detected in the perceptual assessment. This implies that it was not perceived as atypical by expert listeners. The results indicate difficulties in using voice and speech characteristics as markers of autism spectrum disorder in clinical settings. The correct identification of some of the children as having autism spectrum disorder or not also indicates that some children with autism spectrum disorder have a prosodic production sufficiently ‘atypical’ in combination with a limited ability to tell stories to be perceived.
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| 2. |
- Dahlgren, Sven-Olof, 1956, et al.
(författare)
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Referential communication in children with autism spectrum disorder
- 2008
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Ingår i: Autism. - : SAGE Publications. - 1362-3613 .- 1461-7005. ; 12:4, s. 335-348
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Referential communication was studied in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) including children with autism and Asperger syndrome. The aim was to study alternative explanations to the children’s communicative problems in such situations. Factors studied were theory of mind, IQ, verbal ability and memory. The main results demonstrated diminished performance in children with autism spectrum disorder mirroring performance in everyday life in comparison to verbal IQ and mental age matched typically developing children. Among children with autism spectrum disorders, there was a positive relationship between performance in referential communication and theory of mind. Memory capacity proved also to play a role for success in the task.
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| 3. |
- Dahlgren, Sven-Olof, 1956, et al.
(författare)
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Theory of Mind and Executive Functions in Young Bilingual Children
- 2017
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Ingår i: Journal of Genetic Psychology. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0022-1325 .- 1940-0896. ; 178:5, s. 303-307
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Few studies have explored the relationship between theory of mind (ToM), executive function (EF), and bilingualism at the same time. In this study 14 young bilingual children were compared with monolingual children on a test battery composed of 5 ToM tests, 5 EF tests, and 1 test of general language ability. The result showed that despite significantly lower verbal ability, the bilingual children outperformed the monolingual ones on tests of EF. There were no differences in ToM performance. The authors argue that there is a strong relationship between bilingualism and EF, but, contrary to results from earlier studies, they could not find any relationship between bilingualism and ToM. EF did not predict ToM performance. Lack of a significant relationship could be due to the children's young age and consequently their low scores on the ToM tasks.
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| 4. |
- Dahlgren, Sven-Olof, 1956, et al.
(författare)
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Theory of mind in Children with Severe Speech and Physical Impairments
- 2010
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Ingår i: Research in Developmental Disabilities. ; 31, s. 617-624
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The development of a person's ability to understand other's thoughts and feelings, so called "theory of mind" (ToM), is subject to study. Children with communicative disabilities have exhibited problems in this respect, highlighting the role of language in the development of ToM. In this study, ToM was studied in children with cerebral palsy and severe speech impairments. Two tasks, differently dependent on verbal abilities, were used. The results were compared to those of a mental age matched group. The groups differed significantly on the verbally dependent task while difference in performance did not reach significance on the less verbally dependent one. The results are discussed in terms of a delayed development of ToM in children with severe speech and physical impairments, dependent on verbal abilities.
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| 5. |
- Dahlgren Sandberg, Annika, 1946, et al.
(författare)
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A common ground. The ability of children with severe speech and physical impairments (SSPI) to share information.
- 2007
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Ingår i: Presentation at the symposium Understanding Referential communication, XIIIth European Conference on Developmental Psychology, 21-23 August 2007, Jena, Germany..
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- In daily life referential communication situations, nonvocal children who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) often have difficulties to convey information in a way that is adapted to the listener’s needs. One explanation to this could be that the children have difficulties to understand the relation between what the listener already knows, what can be inferred and what cannot. Their difficulties could also indicate problems to identify the qualities that characterize the target. The aim of this study was to examine referential communication in children with severe speech and physical impairments in a structured situation. Apart from the referential communication task assessment was also made of intellectual ability, both auditory and visual memory, verbal ability and mentalizing. Participants were twenty-two 5.5 – 18.9-year-old nonvocal children. The results from this study indicate that children with communicative impairments show specific problems in referential communication situations and that these problems are related to mental age, verbal ability and memory rather than to problems to take the listener’s perspective.
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| 6. |
- Dahlgren Sandberg, Annika, 1946, et al.
(författare)
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Early linguistic experiences and development of theory of mind in children with severe speech and physical impairments
- 2006
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Ingår i: Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology.
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Objective: Theory of mind (ToM) refers to our ability to attribute thoughts, beliefs and feelings to ourselves and to other people, and to our understanding that our actions are governed by these thoughts, beliefs and feelings. This ability is crucial in social interaction and communication. The question of how to explain the development of ToM is still unsettled. Early exposure to communication is one possible prerequisite. If this is the case, then one would expect development of ToM to be affected in children with different communicative impairments. In accordance with this expectation, recent studies have in fact shown that deaf children without early exposure to sign language (Peterson & Siegal, 1999) have difficulties in solving tasks requiring a ToM. Other examples are children with developmental language delay. From this perspective, the development of theory of mind in children with severe speech and physical impairments (SSPI) is most interesting, considering the problems experienced by children with SSPI within the area of early social experience and communication. Methods: In three studies 14, 6 and 16 participants with severe speech and physical impairments participated. Also participating was a group of children, matched to the focus group for mental and linguistic age. They were presented a range of tasks to track the development of ToM: pretend play, perceptual tasks, 1st and 2nd order false belief tasks (so called Change of location tasks) and an Unexpected content task. Results: Findings from our research suggest that the children have difficulties solving the ToM-tasks, but that they follow a normal pattern of development with severe delay compared to children without disability. Conclusions: There are different possible explanations to the childrens early failure to solve ToM-tasks: 1.Limited linguistic and conversational competence 2.Memory problems 3.Lack of experiences, e.g. pretend play 4.Lack of opportunities to take other persons perspectives The ability to take someone elses perspective is crucial in social interaction and communication. Interpersonal communication enhances this ability. It is therefore important not only to provide children with SSPI with appropriate and sufficient communication aids, such as Bliss for example, but also to provide experiences and the tools with which to use communication aids in an efficient manner. References: Peterson, C. C., & Siegal, M. (1999). Representing Inner Worlds: Theory of mind in Autistic, Deaf, and Normal Hearing Children. Psychological Science, 10, 126-129.
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| 7. |
- Dahlgren Sandberg, Annika, 1946, et al.
(författare)
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Reading skills in Swedish children with autism spectrum disorders
- 2009
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Ingår i: Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology. ; 51:Suppl 3.
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Research on reading in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is up to now inconclusive. Some studies have pointed to good word decoding abilities and poor reading comprehension, while in other studies the children also vary considerably in word decoding skills. Most of the research has been done in English speaking populations. In this session we will contrast the different findings and give an example from a study on 37 Swedish speaking children with ASD who were of normal intelligence. In this study word decoding and sentence comprehensions skills were examined in relation to verbal ability, memory and performance on theory of mind (ToM) tasks. The ToM tasks were included because both mentalizing ability and reading are dependent on similar higher order skills, such as the ability to go "beyond the surface", metalinguistic and metacognitive awareness and also verbal comprehension. Main results showed that three distinct groups of readers could be discerned: proficient readers, poor sentence comprehenders and children who in addition to being poor comprehenders also were poor word decoders. The results will be discussed in terms of cognitive and linguistic variables.
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| 8. |
- Dahlgren Sandberg, Annika, 1946, et al.
(författare)
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Theory of mind in children with cerebral palsy: The impact of limited expressive linguistic abilities
- 2012
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Ingår i: Access to language and cognitive development. - : Oxford University Press. - 9780199592722 - 0199592721 ; , s. 62-79
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The performance on theory of mind tasks in children with cerebral palsy and severe speech impairments implies a slower development than that shown by typically developing children. This delay might depend on limited linguistic and conversational competence, memory problems and deficits in executive functions, lack of pretend play or lack of opportunities to take other persons’ perspectives or a combination of all four. It might also reflect methodological issues. The ToM paradigm or the methods typically may serve to underestimate somewhat the abilities of children with CP at interpreting other minds in real life. Given that children with CP have not been the focus of numerous investigations to date, research is urgently required to provide more information about their ToM understanding and cognitive development more generally.
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| 9. |
- Ehlers, Stephan, et al.
(författare)
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Asperger syndrome, autism and attention disorders: a comparative study of the cognitive profiles of 120 children.
- 1997
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Ingår i: Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines. - 0021-9630 .- 1469-7610. ; 38:2, s. 207-217
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) was applied (in a Swedish version) in 120 children with Asperger syndrome, autistic disorder, and attention disorders. Using stepwise logistic regression analysis, the WISC's discriminating ability was investigated. The overall rate of correct diagnostic classification was 63%. Further, WISC profiles were analysed within each group. The group with autistic disorder was characterised by a peak on Block Design. The Asperger syndrome group had good verbal ability and troughs on Object Assembly and Coding. The group with attention disorders had troughs on Coding and Arithmetic. The results suggest that Kaufman's Verbal Comprehension, Perceptual Organisation and Freedom from Distractibility factors rather than verbal IQ and performance IQ account for the variance on the WISC. Furthermore, the Asperger syndrome and autistic disorder groups differed in respect of "fluid" and "crystallised" cognitive ability.
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| 10. |
- Åsberg, Jakob, 1978, et al.
(författare)
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Basic reading skills in high-functioning Swedish children with autism spectrum disorders or attention disorder
- 2008
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Ingår i: Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders. - : Elsevier BV. - 1750-9467. ; 2, s. 95-109
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- High-functioning children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have been reported to have an early success in reading. Children with attention disorders such as DAMP or ADHD, on the other hand, often struggle acquiring reading skills. The primary aim of the study was two-fold: (a) to compare reading performance of children with ASD, DAMP and typical development; (b) to examine whether memory functions and verbal and performance IQ related differently to the reading performance depending on diagnosis. Striking similarities were found between clinical groups on performance level and patterns of reading ability. Decoding and reading comprehension difficulties were common in both clinical groups relative to the comparison group matched for mental age. There was a strong association between word decoding fluency and sentence reading comprehension in the clinical groups even after the effect of age and VIQ was partialled out. Further research on cognition, linguistic abilities and educational milieu is warranted to explore the reasons for the word decoding difficulties.
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