Like all children and adolescents, autistic students need honesty, guidance, and feedback regarding when they are doing tasks correctly and when they are not, but it’s important to always be gentle in tone and word when offering correction or critique. Tone of voice, because of the shifts in meaning it can convey, causes considerable difficulty for anyone on the spectrum.
Even in non-tonal languages, elements of speech like pitch, pace, and inflection can all transform a sentence’s meaning. Therefore, when offering criticism, it’s essential that a gentle, regular tone of voice be used. An angry or loud tone will cloud meaning, because the heightened volume and energy will often obfuscate what you’re saying entirely.