Abstract
Objective:
Prosody is the melody and rhythm of speech. Disorders of prosody (dysprosody) is characterized by alterations in intensity of speech, timing of utterance segments, and rhythm, cadency, and intonation of words. The aim of this review article was to describe the concept of dysprosody in language and speech, and to review dysprosody and related diseases, especially the pervasive developmental disorders.
Method:
The articles about dysprosody were detected by searching Medline and those articles were evaluated and discussed.
Results:
The causes of dysprosody were usually associated with neurological pathologies, such as cerebrovascular accidents, cranioencephalic injuries -especially right hemisphere damages-, Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases and developmental disorders. Abnormal prosody has been frequently identified as a core feature of the syndrome for individuals with pervasive developmental disorders who were able to speak. The autistic individuals showed prosodic deficits in primarily the pragmatic and affective aspects of prosody, with grammatical aspects relatively spared. These differences tended to be persistent and showed little change over time, even when other aspects of language were improved.
Discussion:
The prosody characteristics of a person with autism constitute one of the most significant obstacles for his or her social integration and vocational acceptance. Early identification and suitable intervention on dysprosody can mitigate the emotional and social problems of this disability and improve the outcome.
Keywords: Prosody, dysprosody, pervasive developmental disorders.
