Using tactile cues to improve vocal behavior of children with autism: a case study

• Main Author: 鄭霖
• Other Authors: 鄭靜宜
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/28081934148196321206

碩士 === 國立高雄師範大學 === 聽力學與語言治療研究所 === 100 === The purpose of this study was to explore the influence of tactile cues on vocal behavior of a child with severe autism. It included whether the child could achieve predetermined criterion of improvement and have positive changes in the percentage of syllable with effective voicing, as well as in three acoustic indicators. It is to meet a hypothesis that tactile cues could help low function autistic child develop better voice. The participant was a 9-year old boy with severe autism enrolled in a special education class at an elementary school. He had limited spontaneous oral communication. He often used ecolalia and produced only one syllable in a breath. The characteristics of his voice were whispering, breathiness and vocal fry. The research design was A-B-A’ single subject design. The participant was given 16 half-hour weekly sessions of therapy. There were two kinds of dependent variables. One was percentage of syllable with effective voicing under no tactile cues condition. Another were acoustic indicators including standard deviation of F0, fraction of locally unvoiced frames, and mean noise-to-harmonics ratio. Visual analysis was used for the collected behavior data, and the acoustic data of three assessments was compared. The results showed that the percentage of the syllable with effective voicing increased from about 14 % (on the baseline) to over 50 % (on last 6 sessions of intervention phase and 3 sessions of maintaining phase). Three acoustic indicators of some vowels (/a/, /u/ and /i/) were also improved. These results supported that tactile cues could improve vocal behavior of the participant.