Browsing by Person "Peppé, Sue JE"

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Aspects of identifying prosodic impairment
(2009) Peppé, Sue JE
This paper concludes the scientific forum on Prosody in Speech-Language Pathology that comprises an introduction Crystal, 2009, a lead article Peppé, 2009 and 11 responses to the lead article. This concluding paper is in part a summary of aspects of prosody that were fleshed out in the responses to the lead article, and in part a reply to some of the points raised by contributors. The concluding paper refers to the differing approaches to the taxonomy of prosody; the more specific material on the neurological bases of prosody; the manifestation of prosodic disorder in specific language impairment and Williams Syndrome; the state of the art of prosodic intervention; and the suggestion for assessing visual prosody. More attention is given to the issues of assessment and transcription, which attracted some differences of opinion. Some general methodological issues of testing e.g., standardization, age-appropriateness, and modelling are considered, as well as the possibility of automated assessment and suggestions for testing the perception of lexical stress. Impressionistic transcription and the techniques of conversation analysis are considered for their ability to identify the role of prosody in conversation, more particularly its effectiveness in achieving successful turnchange and interaction in highly unintelligible speech. The usefulness of acoustic analysis with and without phonological transcription is discussed, as well as the goals of transcription and the purposes it serves in the characterization of atypical prosody. The paper concludes by suggesting that better specification of what constitutes typical prosody is required, and that more attention needs to be paid to rhythmical atypicality and the interaction of segmental with suprasegmental impairment.
Assessing prosodic and pragmatic ability in children with high-functioning autism
(2006) Peppé, Sue JE; McCann, Joanne; Gibbon, Fiona; O'Hare, Anne; Rutherford, Marion
Children with high-functioning autism are widely reported to show deficits in both prosodic and pragmatic ability. New procedures for assessing both of these are now available and have been used in a study of 31 children with high-functioning autism and 72 controls. Some of the findings from a review of the literature on prosodic skills in individuals with autism are presented, and it is shown how these skills are addressed in a new prosodic assessment procedure, PEPS-C. A case study of a child with high-functioning autism shows how his prosodic skills can be evaluated on the prosody assessment procedure, and how his skills compare with those of controls. He is also assessed for pragmatic ability. Results of both assessments are considered together to show how, in the case of this child, specific prosodic skill-levels can affect pragmatic ability.
Assessing prosodic and pragmatic ability in children with high-functioning autism.
(2006) Peppé, Sue JE; McCann, Joanne; Gibbon, Fiona; O'Hare, Anne; Rutherford, Marion
Children with high-functioning autism are widely reported to show deficits in both prosodic and pragmatic ability. New procedures for assessing both of these are now available and have been used in a study of 31 children with high-functioning autism and 72 controls. Some of the findings from a review of the literature on prosodic skills in individuals with autism are presented, and it is shown how these skills are addressed in a new prosodic assessment procedure, PEPS-C. A case study of a child with high-functioning autism shows how his prosodic skills can be evaluated on the prosody assessment procedure, and how his skills compare with those of controls. He is also assessed for pragmatic ability. Results of both assessments are considered together to show how, in the case of this child, specific prosodic skill-levels can affect pragmatic ability.
Assessing prosodic skills in five European languages: Cross-linguistic differences in typical and atypical populations
(2010) Peppé, Sue JE; Martinez-Castilla, P.; Coene, Martine; Hesling, Isabelle; Moen, Inger; Gibbon, Fiona
Following demand for a prosody assessment procedure, the test Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (PEPS-C), has been translated from English into Spanish, French, Flemish and Norwegian. This provides scope to examine receptive and expressive prosodic ability in Romance (Spanish and French) as well as Germanic (English and Flemish) languages, and includes the possibility of assessing these skills with regard to lexical tone (Norwegian). Cross-linguistic similarities and differences relevant to the translation are considered. Preliminary findings concerning 8-year-old neurotypical children speaking the five languages are reported. The appropriateness of investigating contrastive stress in Romance as well as Germanic languages is considered: results are reported for assessing this skill in Spanish and English speakers and suggest that in Spanish it is acquired much later than in English. We also examine the feasibility of assessing and comparing prosodic disorder in the five languages, using assessments of prosody in Spanish and English speakers with Williams syndrome as an example. We conclude that, with caveats, the original design of the UK test may indicate comparable stages of prosodic development in neurotypical children and is appropriate for the evaluation of prosodic skills for adults and children, both neurotypical and with impairment, in all five languages. 2009 The Speech Pathology Association of Australia Limited.
Assessment of prosodic ability in atypical populations, with special reference to high-functioning autism
(J&R Press, 2010) Peppé, Sue JE; Setter, J.; Stojanovik, V.
Cross-linguistic expression of contrastive accent: clinical assessment in Spanish and English.
(2010) Martinez-Castilla, P.; Peppé, Sue JE
Well-documented Romance-Germanic differences in the use of accent in speech to convey information-structure and focus cause problems for the assessment of prosodic skills in populations with clinical disorders. The strategies for assessing the ability to use lexical and contrastive accent in English and Spanish are reviewed, and studies in the expression of contrastive accent in Spanish- and English-speaking typically-developing children are described. These studies used similar tasks requiring pre-final contrastive accent. Results were, however, strikingly different (English > Spanish). Using the same tasks, studies of English-speaking individuals with autism and Williams syndrome showed marked difficulty with the expression of contrastive stress, but the use of such tasks with Spanish speakers may merely reflect cross-linguistic differences. This study presents the methodology and results of these tasks, and suggests alternative methods of assessing the ability to discern and use contrastive accents in Spanish.
Developing a test of prosodic ability for speakers of Iberian Spanish
(Elsevier, 2008-11) Martinez-Castilla, P.; Peppé, Sue JE
In the absence of a Spanish prosody assessment procedure, an English one (Profiling Elements of Prosodic Systems-Children: PEPS-C) has been adapted for use with Iberian Spanish speakers. The paper describes the scope, principles and methods of the test and the modifications other than lexical translation that were required to produce a Spanish procedure. Findings from the first studies of data collected using the Spanish test are briefly considered: these suggest crosslinguistic parallels and English/Spanish differences in adult prosodic ability. Lengthier consideration is given to prosodic data from Spanish children and the use of prefinal contrastive accent in the two languages. We conclude that the test is a feasible and valid instrument for assessing Spanish prosodic ability and indicate possible directions for further research. 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Expressive prosody in children with autism spectrum conditions
(2011-01) Peppé, Sue JE; Cleland, Joanne; Gibbon, Fiona; O'Hare, Anne; Martinez-Castilla, P.
The expressive prosodic abilities of two groups of school-age children with autism spectrum conditions (ASC), Asperger's syndrome (AS) and high-functioning autism (HFA), were compared with those of typically-developing controls. The HFA group showed impairment relative to age-matched controls on all the prosody tasks assessed (affect, sentence-type, contrastive stress, phrasing and imitation) while the AS showed impairment only on phrasing and imitation. Compared with lexically-matched controls, impairment on several tasks (affect, contrastive stress and imitation) was found in the HFA group but little in the AS group (phrasing and imitation). Comparisons between the ASC groups showed significant differences on prosody skills. Impairment in prosodic skills may therefore be a reliable indicator of autism spectrum subgroups, at least as far as communicative functioning is concerned. There were also significant differences between ASC groups and lexically-matched typically-developing children on expressive language skills, but the incomplete correlation of the prosody results with scores on language tasks suggests that the prosodic differences between the two groups may not all be attributable to the level of language skills. Suggested further research is to investigate the relationship of prosody and language skills in this population more closely, and to develop a prosody test as part of the diagnostic criteria of ASC.
Intonation features of the expression of emotions in Spanish: preliminary study for a prosody assessment procedure
(Informa Healthcare, 2008-04) Martinez-Castilla, P.; Peppé, Sue JE
This study aimed to find out what intonation features reliably represent the emotions of liking as opposed to disliking in the Spanish language, with a view to designing a prosody assessment procedure for use with children with speech and language disorders. 18 intonationally different prosodic realisations (tokens) of one word (lim_n) were recorded by one native Spanish speaker. The tokens were deemed representative of two categories of emotion: liking or disliking of the taste lemon. 30 native Spanish speakers assigned them to the two categories and rated their expressiveness on a six-point scale. For all tokens except two, agreement between judges as to category was highly significant, some tokens attracting 100% agreement. The intonation contours most related to expressiveness levels were: for liking, an inverted U form contour with exaggerated pitch peak within the tonic syllable; and for disliking, a flat melodic contour with a slight fall.
Prosodic boundary in the speech of children with autism
(2007-08) Peppé, Sue JE
Expressive prosody is thought to be disordered in autism, and this study sets out to evaluate one aspect (prosodic boundary) to investigate a) how nave judges rate utterances for atypicality; b) whether pitch and duration measurements in those utterances differ from those of typicallydeveloping children; and c) whether children with autism can use prosodic boundary in speech for linguistic distinctions. Samples were drawn from children aged between 5 and 13 years; 31 with language-delayed high-functioning autism (LDHFA), 40 with Asperger's syndrome (AS) and 119 with typical development (TD). Results showed that nave judges perceived children with LD-HFA as sounding more atypical than those with AS, who in turn were marginally more atypical than those with TD. Measurements suggested those with LDHFA had wider pitch-span than those with TD. The groups did not differ on linguistic functionality, and it is possible that factors other than prosody contributed to the perception of atypicality.
Prosodic development in European Portuguese from childhood to adulthood
(CUP, 2017-03-02) Filipe, M.; Peppé, Sue JE; Frota, S.; Vicente, S.
We describe the European Portuguese version of a test of prosodic abilities originally developed for English: the Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (Pepp & McCann, 2003). Using this test, we examined the development of several components of European Portuguese prosody between 5 and 20 years of age (N = 131). Results showed prosodic performance improving with age: 5-year-olds reach adultlike performance in the affective prosodic tasks; 7-year-olds mastered the ability to discriminate and produce short prosodic items, as well as the ability to understand question versus declarative intonation; 8-year-olds mastered the ability to discriminate long prosodic items; 9-year-olds mastered the ability to produce question versus declarative intonation, as well as the ability to identify focus; 10- to 11-year-olds mastered the ability to produce long prosodic items; 14- to 15-year-olds mastered the ability to comprehend and produce syntactically ambiguous utterances disambiguated by prosody; and 18- to 20-year-olds mastered the ability to produce focus. Cross-linguistic comparisons showed that linguistic form-meaning relations do not necessarily develop at the same pace across languages. Some prosodic contrasts are hard to achieve for younger Portuguese-speaking children, namely, the production of chunking and focus.
Prosody and its relationship to language in school-aged children with high-functioning autism
(2007-11) McCann, Joanne; Peppé, Sue JE; Gibbon, Fiona; O'Hare, Anne; Rutherford, Marion
Background: Disordered expressive prosody is a widely reported characteristic of individuals with autism. Despite this, it has received little attention in the literature and the few studies that have addressed it have not described its relationship to other aspects of communication. Aims: To determine the nature and relationship of expressive and receptive language, phonology, pragmatics, and non-verbal ability in school-aged children with high-functioning autism and to determine how prosody relates to these abilities and which aspects of prosody are most affected. Methods & Procedures: A total of 31 children with high-functioning autism and 72 typically developing children matched for verbal mental age completed a battery of speech, language, and non-verbal assessments and a procedure for assessing receptive and expressive prosody. Outcomes & Results: Language skills varied, but the majority of children with high-functioning autism had deficits in at least one aspect of language with expressive language most severely impaired. All of the children with high-functioning autism had difficulty with at least one aspect of prosody and prosodic ability correlated highly with expressive and receptive language. The children with high-functioning autism showed significantly poorer prosodic skills than the control group, even after adjusting for verbal mental age. Conclusions: Investigating prosody and its relationship to language in autism is clinically important because expressive prosodic disorders add an additional social and communication barrier for these children and problems are often life-long even when other areas of language improve. Furthermore, a receptive prosodic impairment may have implications not only for understanding the many functions of prosody but also for general language comprehension. 2007 Royal College of Speech & Language Therapists.
Receptive and expressive prosodic ability in children with high-functioning autism
(American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, 2007) Peppé, Sue JE; McCann, Joanne; Gibbon, Fiona; O'Hare, Anne; Rutherford, Marion
Purpose: This study aimed to identify the nature and extent of receptive and expressive prosodic deficits in children with high-functioning autism (HFA). Method: Thirty-one children with HFA, 72 typically developing controls matched on verbal mental age, and 33 adults with normal speech completed the prosody assessment procedure, Profiling Elements of Prosodic Systems in Children. Results: Children with HFA performed significantly less well than controls on 11 of 12 prosody tasks (p < .005). Receptive prosodic skills showed a strong correlation (p < .01) with verbal mental age in both groups, and to a lesser extent with expressive prosodic skills. Receptive prosodic scores also correlated with expressive prosody scores, particularly in grammatical prosodic functions. Prosodic development in the HFA group appeared to be delayed in many aspects of prosody and deviant in some. Adults showed near-ceiling scores in all tasks. Conclusions: The study demonstrates that receptive and expressive prosodic skills are closely associated in HFA. Receptive prosodic skills would be an appropriate focus for clinical intervention, and further investigation of prosody and the relationship between prosody and social skills is warranted.
Receptive and expressive prosodic ability in children with high-functioning autism.
(QMU Speech Science Research Centre, 2006) Peppé, Sue JE; McCann, Joanne; Gibbon, Fiona; O'Hare, Anne; Rutherford, Marion
Abstract This study aimed to identify the nature and extent of receptive and expressive prosodic deficits in children with high-functioning autism. In a data-based group study, 31 children with high-functioning autism (HFA, excluding Asperger's syndrome) and 72 typically developing controls matched on verbal mental age completed a prosody assessment procedure (PEPS-C). Children with HFA performed significantly less well than controls on eleven out of twelve prosody tasks (p < .005). Receptive prosodic skills showed strong correlation (p < .01) with verbal mental age in both groups, as did, to a lesser extent, expressive prosodic skills. Receptive prosodic scores also correlated with expressive prosody scores, particularly in grammatical prosodic functions(turnend and prosodic phrasing/ chunking). Prosodic development in the HFA group appeared to be delayed in many aspects of prosody and deviant in some (e.g. accent tended to be placed early in focus tasks and Same items were often perceived as Different in auditory discrimination tasks). The study demonstrates that receptive prosodic deficit, expressive prosodic skills, and language development are closely associated in the condition of autism. Receptive prosodic skills would be an appropriate focus for clinical intervention, and further investigation of atypical expressive prosody and the relationship between prosody and social skills is warranted.
The Integration of Prosodic Speech in High Functioning Autism: A Preliminary fMRI Study
(2010) Hesling, Isabelle; Dilharreguy, Bixente; Peppé, Sue JE; Amirault, Marion; Bouvard, Manuel; Allard, Michle; Aleman, Andr
Background Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by a specific triad of symptoms such as abnormalities in social interaction, abnormalities in communication and restricted activities and interests. While verbal autistic subjects may present a correct mastery of the formal aspects of speech, they have difficulties in prosody (music of speech), leading to communication disorders. Few behavioural studies have revealed a prosodic impairment in children with autism, and among the few fMRI studies aiming at assessing the neural network involved in language, none has specifically studied prosodic speech. The aim of the present study was to characterize specific prosodic components such as linguistic prosody (intonation, rhythm and emphasis) and emotional prosody and to correlate them with the neural network underlying them. Methodology/Principal Findings We used a behavioural test (Profiling Elements of the Prosodic System, PEPS) and fMRI to characterize prosodic deficits and investigate the neural network underlying prosodic processing. Results revealed the existence of a link between perceptive and productive prosodic deficits for some prosodic components (rhythm, emphasis and affect) in HFA and also revealed that the neural network involved in prosodic speech perception exhibits abnormal activation in the left SMG as compared to controls (activation positively correlated with intonation and emphasis) and an absence of deactivation patterns in regions involved in the default mode. Conclusions/Significance These prosodic impairments could not only result from activation patterns abnormalities but also from an inability to adequately use the strategy of the default network inhibition, both mechanisms that have to be considered for decreasing task performance in High Functioning Autism.
The Prosody-Language Relationship in Children with High-Functioning Autism
(Blackwell, 2008) McCann, Joanne; Peppé, Sue JE; Gibbon, Fiona; O'Hare, Anne; Cebula, K.; Gomez, J C; McGregor, E.; Nunez, M.
The prosody-language relationship in children with high-functioning autism
(2006) McCann, Joanne; Peppé, Sue JE; Gibbon, Fiona; O'Hare, Anne; Rutherford, Marion
Abstract In Kanner's original description of autism he noted disordered prosody as a common feature. Despite this, the area has received very little attention in the literature and those studies that have addressed prosody in autism have not addressed its relationship to other aspects of communication. This chapter will give an overview of research in this area to date and summarise the findings of a study designed to investigate the prosody and language skills of 31 children with high functioning autism. Two case studies of children with autism will be used to illustrate the relationship between language and prosody and to emphasise the prosodic impairment present in many children with autism.
The Relationship between Form and Function Level Receptive Prosodic Abilities in Autism
(Springer Science & Business Media B.V., 2008) Järvinen-Pasley, Anna; Peppé, Sue JE; King-Smth, G.; Heaton, P.
Prosody can be conceived as having form (auditory-perceptual characteristics) and function (pragmatic/linguistic meaning). No known studies have examined the relationship between form- and function-level prosodic skills in relation to the effects of stimulus length and/or complexity upon such abilities in autism. Research in this area is both insubstantial and inconclusive. Children with autism and controls completed the receptive tasks of the Profiling Elements of Prosodic Systems in Children (PEPS-C) test, which examines both form- and function-level skills, and a sentence-level task assessing the understanding of intonation. While children with autism were unimpaired in both form and function tasks at the single-word level, they showed significantly poorer performance in the corresponding sentence-level tasks than controls. Implications for future research are discussed.
The relationship between socio-economic status and lexical development
(Taylor & Francis, 2008-04) Black, Esther; Peppé, Sue JE; Gibbon, Fiona
The British Picture Vocabulary Scale, second edition (BPVS-II), a measure of receptive vocabulary, is widely used by speech and language therapists and researchers into speech and language disorders, as an indicator of language delay, but it has frequently been suggested that receptive vocabulary may be more associated with socio-economic status. Studies on this topic have produced conflicting results. This study reviews the literature and tests the hypothesis that receptive vocabulary is associated with socio-economic status. The BPVS-II was administered to 76 typically-developing children aged 4 to 11, classified according to deprivation category, in Edinburgh, Scotland. The results showed no significant correlation between the two measures. Error patterns within the results are examined to discover why there should be discrepancy between them and the findings of other studies. The interaction between word frequency and the items used in the BPVS-II is examined, and implications for the use of the BPVS-II with all children of primary school age are discussed.
Why is prosody in speech-language pathology so difficult?
(2009) Peppé, Sue JE
An important question for speech-language pathologists is how best to define and characterize atypical prosody, with the eventual aim of designing effective intervention for it. With a view to investigating why prosodic atypicality should be hard to define and what considerations a speech-language pathologist should keep in mind, this paper begins by setting out some established functions of prosody and the forms that convey them, and goes on to review the neurological bases of prosodic disorder and some of the conditions in which prosodic disorder is known to occur. Factors in the perception of prosodic disorder are discussed, including the relationship between prosody and other aspects of communication, to identify the problems of distinguishing between prosody and interacting factors. The relationship between phonological prosodic categories and disordered prosody is considered, i.e., the problems of assigning disordered prosody to these categories for clinicians. Current methods of assessment, transcription and approaches to treatment are briefly considered, and an evaluation is made of how much progress has been made towards answering the initial question.