Phonological Processes in First and Second Language in an Adolescent Moderate-functioning Austictic Individual

Autism may lead to distorted speech production. Studies on clinical populations investigating phonological processes in first (L1) and second (L2) language indicate that a higher number of processes is applied in L2 because L2 is a more difficult linguistic context. We investigated phonological processes in a Polish speaking adolescent with moderate-functioning autism who had intermediate proficiency level in English. The subject performed L1 and L2 clinical speech tests. The recordings were transcribed phonetically and analyzed acoustically with Praat. We found that in a spontaneous speech task, there were significantly more processes in L1 (14 processes per 100 phonemes) than in L2 (0,88 processes per 100 phonemes). More errors in L1 speech might have been caused by a faster speech tempo and longer phoneme sequences that resulted in a decreased articulatory precision. Our study indicates that faster speech rate might be associated with more speech errors in moderate-functioning autism.