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NEWS

Recent Presentations

Dr. Patrizia Bonaventura 
Department of Speech-Language and Hearing Sciences, Hofstra University, NY ​
Dr. Magda Di Renzo 
Istituto di Ortofonologia, Rome

Dr. Patrizia Bonaventura 
Department of Speech-Language and Hearing Sciences, Hofstra University, NY ​
 

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Abstract: 

This project aims to measure and assess voice quality in children with autism. Few previous studies exist, which have analyzed the voice quality of individuals with autism: abnormal voice characteristics identified are high pitch, great pitch excursions, and large changes in volume. However, these findings were not present in all the participants in the study.

Existing studies were mostly based on perceptual evaluations and did not provide an acoustic analysis of the voice quality of the participants with autism. Also, the studies did not focus specifically on Italian-speaking children’s voice.

The present study aimed to gather more data on the acoustic characteristics of the voice of children with autism, in order to identify patterns of abnormal voice features that might shed some light on the causes of the dysphonia, and possibly be used to create a pediatric assessment tool for early identification of autism.

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Dr. Bonaventura has been awarded the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Fellowship grant from the Zarb School of Business at Hofstra University (2/2023) 
 

Presented at the International Conference on Autism Research, virtual (based in New York City), June 2-3 2022. 

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Presented at the 17 International Conference on Child Language Acquisition , February 16-17, 2023 in Barcelona, Spain and Virtual. 

Abstract:

The aim of this study is to analyze the influence of prosody on acquisition of temporal aspects of V-V anticipatory lingual coarticulation in productions by Italian-speaking children. Two twin 7-years old male children, native Italian-speakers, interacted with the same adult, repeating nonsense disyllables containing VtV sequences where V1 = {i, a} and V2 = {a,e,i,o,u}, with different stress patterns (e.g. pi’ta, pi’ta). The durations of the VC F2 transitions and the CV/VC F2 transitions durations ratios, in different V2 contexts and stress conditions, were measured by spectrographic analysis, and compared between pronunciations by each child vs. the adult, to test whether the child was able to imitate the duration of the transitions as produced by the adult in different stress conditions. Results highlighted a significant difference in durations of VC transitions, between children and the adult: longer VC transitions durations, indicating greater amount of coarticulation, were found for one child in every context, and for the other, only in stressed [it] sequences. The data supports the hypothesis of presence of different temporal patterns of anticipatory coarticulation in the adult and the children, and of greater amount of coarticulation in children, with different strategies of implementation across different prosodic conditions.  

Received Best Presentation Award 

Voice Quality in Italian Speaking Children with Autism 
 

Acquisition of Anticipatory Coarticulation in Italian-Speaking Children: An Acoustic Study 

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