Suchergebnisse

This is a study of modal time in the autobiographical narratives of a group of five, eight and twelve year old children. Specifically, it is a description of the discourse functions associated with the English modal auxiliaries in conjunction with tense markings in the narratives. The auxiliaries {can, could, will, would, may, must, might, shall, should, ought) are a set of grammatical functors that express a range of related concepts such as ability, permission, possibility, desire, intention and obligation. The narratives are discussed based on a form of variation analysis focusing on both the grammatical and the discursive shape of the stories. It is part of a wider exploration of the role played by language and grammar in the construction of self and identity.
{Child language, Narrative development, Tense and modality, Functional linguistics, Grammatical analysis)

Purpose
This paper assesses the ability of the minimally verbal child with autism to recognise their own voice. The rationale for this study rests in recent advances in technology aimed at making the voice of speech generating devices (SGDs) sound more like the child using them (van Santen and Black, 2009). The purpose of this paper is to investigate the child's ability to actually recognise the sound of their own voice in a series of short experiments using computer-based methodology.


Design/methodology/approach
Using a voice-face matching computerised paradigm, the performance of 33 children with autism was compared to that of 27 children with developmental delay (DD), and 33 typically developing (TD) children. The children were matched for verbal and non-verbal ability and a training period was conducted prior to the main test to ensure children's understanding of what was expected of them.


Findings
The findings of this study suggest that the child with autism recognise the sound of their own voice at test, but with much greater difficulty than age-and-ability matched comparison groups. The implications of this finding are useful for researchers in the field of speech mimicry technology and manufacturers of SGD software packages. The paper also provides empirical insights about how the child with autism may process voice in their everyday social interactions.


Research limitations/implications
Some limitations to this study exist, for instance, there were only a small number of presentations involving self-voice in this task. This may have over simplified the process for the young TD children and the children with DD. Nevertheless, it is striking that despite being matched for non-verbal mental age, the children with autism performed significantly less well than either of the other two groups of children. However, future studies would benefit from adjusting the number of presentations of voice and face accordingly. It is also important to note that for some children with autism the simultaneous presentation of faces and voices may act more as an interference effect (Cook and Wilding, 1997; Joassin et al., 2004) than a facilitation effect (Molholm et al., 2002). Future studies may wish to test a subgroup on voice recognition without the aid of visual prompts.


Practical implications
The paper includes implications for the type of voice children with autism may prefer to use when communicating via a SGD. The authors suggest that if the child does not recognise or prefer the sound of their own natural voice on such devices, partial or complete abandonment of the SGD may occur.


Originality/value
This paper fulfils an identified need to research how children's abilities and preferences can be taken into account at the point of decision making for particular communication tools.