The present study investigated prosody, particularly
prominence and prosodic contours in relation to speech acts
that carry useful information to maintain and regulate
communicative intent and conversational skills. Participants
were eight autistic French-speaking children aged from 4 to 6.
Spontaneous speech samples were collected in a free play
situation. Results revealed important prosodic disturbances in
relation to declaratives, exclamations and questions. Such
patterns of results, to a certain extent, support the hypothesis
that abnormal prosody is identified as a core deficit in
individuals with autism.