Sung Speech Training Improves Prosodic Focus Marking in a Nondominant Language in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

A randomized controlled study tested whether short-term song-based training could improve prosodic focus-marking abilities in Mandarin (nondominant language) among Cantonese-speaking autistic children, leveraging the acoustic similarities between song and speech. The intervention successfully enhanced on-focus expansion use in fundamental frequency for focus marking, though effects on post-focus compression were minimal and the training did not increase overall prosodic correlate use.