Articulatory coordination grows in non-autistic but not mixed autistic speech
Articulatory Entrainment and Coordination Complexity in Spontaneous Autistic and Non-autistic Dialogue
Machine Learning
Summary
Talking naturally involves speakers adjusting how they use their vocal tracts to better communicate. The authors studied how autistic and non-autistic adults change this coordination during spontaneous conversations. They found that non-autistic pairs tend to become more coordinated over time, autistic pairs do so moderately, and mixed pairs show the least coordination. More coordination was linked to people feeling their conversations went well. This suggests that how speech sounds change during a chat relates to social interaction success.
What this means in practice
- •For speech therapists: Design therapy activities that track and enhance articulatory coordination changes in autistic and non-autistic clients during natural conversations.
- •For conversational ai developers: Incorporate models of articulatory entrainment dynamics to create more natural and socially adaptive dialogue agents.
Authors
Thanushi Withanage, Carol Espy-Wilson, Elizabeth Redcay, Desi Jones, Noah Sasson
Abstract
Articulatory entrainment, the adaptation of vocal tract coordination to facilitate interaction remains underexplored in spontaneous dialogue, particularly among autistic speakers. Many prior studies have utilized task-based, phoneme-level analyses with invasive measurement techniques. Here, we introduce a speaker-independent framework to quantify articulatory entrainment in spontaneous dyadic conversations among autistic and non-autistic adults using acoustic-to-articulatory inversion and coordination complexity metrics. We examine temporal changes in articulatory coordination across interaction. Non-autistic dyads exhibit increasing coordination complexity and stronger entrainment over time, autistic dyads show moderate effects, and mixed dyads demonstrate the least alignment. Greater articulatory entrainment correlates with higher self-reported conversational success, indicating increase in coordination complexity as a marker of effective social interaction.