The finding that some children produce atypical,
non-developmental, errors supports evidence from
previous research of deviant speech development in
some children with ASD (Wolk & Edwards, 1993;
Wolk & Giesen, 2000). Two children in our sample
showed the deviant pattern of phoneme specific nasal
emission (Peterson-Falzone & Graham, 1990). This
deviant speech pattern was due to abnormal learning
and involves nasal emission during specific speech
sounds, (e.g., /s/ and /z/), with air emitting from the
nose instead of the mouth during production. This
unusual speech pattern has not been reported in
typically developing children and only rarely reported
in children with phonological or articulation
disorders (Peterson-Falzone & Graham, 1990). To
our knowledge, this is the first time phoneme specific
nasal emission has been reported in children with
ASD. Interestingly, one of the children who produced
this error achieved a standard score in the
normal range. This highlights the need to analyse the
errors made by the children, as a normal score does
not necessarily indicate normal speech.