Hearing me hearing you: Reciprocal effects between child and parent language in autism and typical development

Vocabulary Composition Shapes Language Development in Children With Cochlear Implants

Although vocabulary size is thought to index children's language abilities, an increasing body of work suggests that regularities in children's vocabulary composition, particularly the proportion of shape-based nouns (e.g., cup), support language development. Here we examine initial vocabulary composition in children with hearing loss following cochlear implantation (n = 163) and age-matched children with normal hearing (n = 87). This comparison constitutes an experiment in nature for understanding how early vocabulary composition shapes subsequent language development in the context of the clinical provision of auditory experience. Children with higher initial proportions of shape-based nouns had larger vocabularies and scored higher on tests of receptive and expressive language abilities at 1, 2, and 3 years follow-up, than children whose vocabularies had lower proportions of shape-based nouns. These effects were strongest for cochlear implant users, especially 2-3 years postimplantation. The results suggest that knowing shape-based nouns facilitates language development and may ameliorate delayed language development trajectories.

What role does the environment play in language development? Exploring the associations among socioeconomic status, parent language input, and language skills in school-aged children with autism

Language development in children with autism is influenced by proximal (e.g., parent language input) and distal (e.g., socioeconomic status) environmental constructs. Studies have found that "rich and responsive" parent language input supports autistic children's language development, and recent work has reported positive associations between measures of socioeconomic status (SES) and child language skills. However, little is known about how these proximal and distal environmental constructs interact to shape language development in autism. In a sample of 74 autistic school-aged children, the present study investigated the associations among measures of SES, the quantity and quality of language produced by parents and children during home-based dyadic parent-child interactions, and children's expressive and receptive language skills. Results showed that annual household income was positively associated with parent number of total words (NTW), parent number of different words (NDW), and parent mean length of utterance (MLU), while neither parent education level nor annual household income were significantly associated with measures of child language skills. Parent MLU was positively associated with child MLU and child expressive language skills. Findings suggest that annual household income may influence both the quantity and quality of parent language input, and that parent MLU, a qualitative measure of parent language input, may play a particularly important role in shaping autistic children's expressive language development. Future research should study longitudinal associations among SES, parent language input, and child language skills, as identifying environmental predictors of language skills in autism may facilitate the creation of more effective interventions that support language development.

Exploring cross-linguistic differences in parental input and their associations with child expressive language in ASD: Bulgarian versus English comparison

BACKGROUND

Parental input plays a central role in typical language acquisition and development. In autism spectrum disorder (ASD), characterized by social communicative and language difficulties, parental input presents an important avenue for investigation as a target for intervention. A rich body of literature has identified which aspects of grammatical complexity and lexical diversity are most associated with child language ability in both typical development and autism. Yet, the majority of these studies are conducted with English-speaking children, thus potentially overlooking nuances in parental input derived from cross-linguistic variation.

AIMS

To examine the differences in verbal parental input to Bulgarian- and English-speaking children with ASD. To examine whether aspects of verbal parental input found to be concurrent predictors of English-speaking children's expressive language ability are also predictors of the expressive language of Bulgarian-speaking children with ASD.

METHODS & PROCEDURES

We compared parental input to Bulgarian-speaking (N = 37; 2;7-9;10 years) and English-speaking (N = 37; 1;8-4;9 years) children with ASD matched on expressive language. Parent-child interactions were collected during free play with developmentally appropriate toys. These interactions were transcribed, and key measures of parental input were extracted.

OUTCOMES & RESULTS

English-speaking parents produced more word tokens and word types than Bulgarian-speaking parents. However, Bulgarian parents produced more verbs in relation to nouns and used more statements and exclamations but asked fewer questions than English-speaking parents. In addition, child age and parents' use of questions were significant concurrent predictors of child expressive vocabulary.

CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS

This is one of the first studies to conduct a cross-linguistic comparison of parental input in ASD. The differences found emphasize the need to further study parental input to Bulgarian children and adapt naturalistic parent-mediated interventions to the local language and its specific characteristics.

WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS

What is already known on the subject A rich body of literature has identified the specific aspects of grammatical complexity, lexical diversity, and question-asking that are concurrently and longitudinally associated with the language ability of children with typical development and of children with ASD. Yet, the majority of these studies are conducted with English-speaking children. What this paper adds to the existing knowledge The present study finds that there are specific differences in verbal parental input to Bulgarian- and English-speaking children with autism in terms of lexical composition and question-asking. Bulgarian parents used more verbs than nouns, and the opposite pattern was found for English-speaking parents. In addition, Bulgarian parents asked fewer questions but used more statements and exclamations. Nevertheless, parental question use was significantly correlated with children's language ability across both groups, suggesting that question-asking should be further examined as a potential target for parent-mediated language interventions for Bulgarian children with autism. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? Most language and social communication interventions for autism are designed and piloted with English-speaking children. These interventions are often simply translated and used in different countries, with different populations and in different contexts. However, considering that one of the defining characteristics of autism is language difficulty, more studies should examine (1) how these language difficulties manifest in languages other than English, and (2) what characterizes verbal parental input in these other contexts. Such research investigations should inform future language and social communication interventions. The present study emphasizes the cross-linguistic differences between Bulgarian- and English-speaking parents' verbal input to their children with autism.

Putting the child in the driver's seat: Insights into language development from children's interactions in preschool classrooms

Children's own language production has a role in structuring the language of their conversation partners and influences their own development. Children's active participation in their own language development is most apparent in the rich body of work investigating language in natural environments. The advent of automated measures of vocalizations and movement have made such in situ research increasingly feasible. In this chapter, we review recent research on children's language development in context with a particular focus on research employing automated methods in preschool classrooms for children between ages 2 and 5 years. These automated methods indicate that the speech directed to preschool children from specific peers predicts the child's speech to those peers on a subsequent observation occasion. Similar patterns are seen in the influence of peer and teacher phonemic diversity on the phonemic diversity of children's speech to those partners. In both cases, children's own speech to partners was the best predictor of their language abilities, suggesting their active role in their own development. Finally, new research suggests the potential of machine learning to predict children's speech in group contexts, and to transcribe classroom speech to better understand the content of children's conversations and how they change with development.

An observational study of parental language during play and mealtime in toddlers at variable likelihood for autism

Parental language input influences child language outcomes but may vary based on certain characteristics. This research examined how parental language differs during two contexts for toddlers at varying likelihood of autism based on their developmental skills. Parental language (quantity, quality, and pragmatic functions) was analyzed during dyadic play and mealtime interactions as a secondary data analysis of observational data from a study of toddlers at elevated and lower likelihood of autism. Child developmental skills and sensory processing were also assessed. Parents used more words per minute, directives, and verbs during play and more adjectives, descriptions, and questions during mealtime. Parental language differed based on child fine motor skills, receptive language, and levels of sensory hyporesponsiveness but not autism likelihood. Overall, this study found that parental language varies based on context and child developmental skills. Future research examining parental language should include pragmatic functions and context across developmental trajectories.

Developmental Profile in Children Aged 3-6 Years: Down Syndrome vs. Autism Spectrum Disorder

This research aims to compare the developmental profiles of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and children with Down Syndrome (DS) between the ages of 3 and 6 years. The study examines whether these developmental disorders share common developmental milestones or exhibit distinctive characteristics. A total of 43 children, 23 with DS and 20 with ASD, participated in the study. Cognitive and language skills were assessed using standardized tools, including the Battelle Developmental Inventory, Reynell Developmental Language Scales III, and NEPSY-II battery. The results indicated that children with ASD outperformed children with DS in the areas of fine motor skills, gross motor skills, and communication. Additionally, children with ASD demonstrated higher scores in language comprehension and expressive language, compared to children with DS. Significant correlations were found between motor skills and communication abilities. Neuropsychological evaluations revealed significant differences between the two groups in various tasks, such as the comprehension of instructions, body part naming and identification, and recognition of emotions. These findings contribute to our understanding of the similarities and differences between ASD and DS, shedding light on the dissociation between cognition and language and its impact on adaptive functioning in these populations.

The impact of social-environmental factors on IQ in syndromic intellectual developmental disabilities

Despite having the same underlying genetic etiology, individuals with the same syndromic form of intellectual developmental disability (IDD) show a large degree of interindividual differences in cognition and IQ. Research indicates that up to 80% of the variation in IQ scores among individuals with syndromic IDDs is attributable to nongenetic effects, including social-environmental factors. In this narrative review, we summarize evidence of the influence that factors related to economic stability (focused on due to its prevalence in existing literature) have on IQ in individuals with syndromic IDDs. We also highlight the pathways through which economic stability is hypothesized to impact cognitive development and drive individual differences in IQ among individuals with syndromic IDDs. We also identify broader social-environmental factors (e.g., social determinants of health) that warrant consideration in future research, but that have not yet been explored in syndromic IDDs. We conclude by making recommendations to address the urgent need for further research into other salient factors associated with heterogeneity in IQ. These recommendations ultimately may shape individual- and community-level interventions and may inform systems-level public policy efforts to promote the cognitive development of and improve the lived experiences of individuals with syndromic IDDs.

Adding to the Conversation: Language Delays and Parent-Child Interactions in the Younger Siblings of Children With Autism

In their first three years, children begin to maintain topics and add new information in conversation. In turn, caregivers create opportunities for language learning. Compared to children with no family history of autism (typical likelihood, TL), the younger siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are at elevated likelihood (EL) for both ASD and language delays. This study asked: (1) Do profiles of spoken language and conversational skills differ across groups? (2) Does spoken language relate to conversational skills? and (3) How does parent speech relate to child spoken language and conversational skills? Child spoken language, conversational skills, and parent speech were examined during toy play at home with three-year-old TL (n = 16) and EL children with ASD (EL-ASD, n = 10), non-ASD language delay (EL-LD, n = 21), and no delays or diagnoses (EL-ND, n = 37). EL-ASD children produced fewer intelligible utterances, and EL-LD and EL-ASD children produced shorter utterances than TL and EL-ND children. When utterances were intelligible, all groups were highly contingent to the topic. EL-ASD children were less likely than all other groups to add new information, and adding new information was positively associated with utterance length. Parents of EL-ASD children had fewer opportunities to respond contingently. However, all parents were highly topic-contingent when child speech was intelligible, and parent speech complexity varied with child language and conversational skills. Findings highlight strengths in conversational skills for EL-ASD children during toy play with parents and show that children and caregivers together shape opportunities for developing language and conversation.

Trajectory research in children with an autism diagnosis: A scoping review

LAY ABSTRACT

The types of outcomes studied in children on the autism spectrum include clinical characteristics, such as social functioning, communication, language, or autism symptoms. Research that measures these outcomes at multiple timepoints is useful to improve our understanding of what to expect as children develop. In trajectory studies, researchers assess outcomes at three or more timepoints. This method has advantages over two-timepoint studies because it allows researchers to describe changes in the speed of development, such as accelerations, plateaus, or slowdowns. We identified and reviewed 103 published trajectory studies in children (to age 18 years) with an autism diagnosis. Importantly, we did not include studies of treatments or their effects, nor did we summarize the results of studies. Instead, this review summarizes the characteristics of the available published research, including the methods used, the many different outcomes that have been studied over time and the ages over which they have been studied. This summary may be of interest to autistic people and caregivers (parents) who want to know about the existence of research that provides answers about what to expect during an autistic child's development. We have recommended that future trajectory research efforts try to make up for the lack of studies from low- and middle-income countries; that more attention is given to the following outcomes that are meaningful to caregivers and autistic people; and to try to fill in the age gaps where more outcome-specific data are needed.

Expressive Language Profiles in a Clinical Screening Sample of Mandarin-Speaking Preschool Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

PURPOSE

This cross-sectional study aimed to depict expressive language profiles and clarify lexical-grammatical interrelationships in Mandarin-speaking preschoolers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) during the administration of the simplified Chinese Psychoeducational Profile-Third Edition screening.

METHOD

We collected naturalistic language samples from 81 (74 boys, seven girls) 2- to 7-year-old (Mage = 55.6 months, SD = 15.17) Mandarin-speaking children with ASD in clinician-child interactions. The child participants were divided into five age subgroups with 12-month intervals according to their chronological age. Computer-assisted part-of-speech tagging, constituency analysis, and dependency analysis addressed the developmental trajectories of early lexical and grammatical growth in each age subgroup.

RESULTS

Significant within-ASD differences were observed in content words, function words, and lexical categories. Nouns and verbs were the predominant lexical categories, while noun types overwhelmed verb types in children over 3 years old. The grammatical development of 5- to 6-year-old Mandarin-speaking children with ASD was better than that of 3- to 4-year-old children. The trends of syntactic structures, grammatical relations, and grammatical complexity in each age group were similar.

CONCLUSIONS

Mandarin-speaking preschoolers with ASD produce more lexicons with increasing age. They preserve the noun bias as a universal mechanism in early lexical learning. Moreover, their developmental trajectories of grammatical growth were comparable in each age subgroup. In addition, their lexicons and grammar were synchronically developed during early language acquisition.

Parental Imitations and Expansions of Child Language Predict Later Language Outcomes of Autistic Preschoolers

Both the amount and responsiveness of adult language input contribute to the language development of autistic and non-autistic children. From parent-child interaction footage, we measured the amount of adult language input, overall parent responsiveness, and six discrete parent responsive behaviours (imitations, expansions, open-ended questions, yes/no questions, comments and acknowledgements) to explore which types of responsiveness predicted autistic preschoolers' language five months later, after controlling for adult language input. We found expansions and particularly imitations to be more important for later language than overall responsiveness. This study emphasises the need to capture what exactly about parent language input influences child language acquisition, and adds to the evidence that imitating and expanding early language might be particularly beneficial for autistic preschoolers.

Applying a Parent Training Program in a Naturalistic Behavior Analytic Context to Improve Attachment in Children with ASD

Infants develop attachment to their caregivers very early on. The quality of attachment is considered to be crucial for the emotional development of humans and animals alike. Despite its importance, very little is known about how attachment develops between children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and their caregivers. The purpose of the present study was to assess the attachment patterns of two young children with ASD with their parents and to identify the means for promoting parent, child, and parent-child relational characteristics that may contribute to the development of secure attachment. The results replicated prior findings pertaining to attachment quality of children with ASD and demonstrated the effectiveness of a naturalistic, behavior-analytic intervention in improving the quality of their attachment.

Repeat After Me? Both Children With and Without Autism Commonly Align Their Language With That of Their Caregivers

Linguistic repetitions in children are conceptualized as negative in children with autism - echolalia, without communicative purpose - and positive in typically developing (TD) children - linguistic alignment involved in shared engagement, common ground and language acquisition. To investigate this apparent contradiction we analyzed spontaneous speech in 67 parent-child dyads from a longitudinal corpus (30 minutes of play activities at 6 visits over 2 years). We included 32 children with autism and 35 linguistically matched TD children (mean age at recruitment 32.76 and 20.27 months). We found a small number of exact repetitions in both groups (roughly 1% of utterances across visits), which increased over time in children with autism and decreased in the TD group. Partial repetitions were much more frequent: children reused caregivers' words at high rates regardless of diagnostic group (24% of utterances at first visit), and this increased in frequency (but not level) over time, faster for TD children (at final visit: 33% for autism, 40% for TD). The same happened for partial repetition of syntax and semantic alignment. However, chance alignment (as measured by surrogate pairs) also increased and findings for developmental changes were reliable only for syntactic and semantic alignment. Children with richer linguistic abilities also displayed a higher tendency to partially re-use their caregivers' language (alignment rates and semantic alignment). This highlights that all children commonly re-used the words, syntax, and topics of their caregivers, albeit with some quantitative differences, and that most repetition was at least potentially productive, with repeated language being re-contextualized and integrated with non-repeated language. The salience of echolalia in ASD might be partially explained by slight differences in frequency, amplified by lower semantic alignment, persistence over time, and expectations of echolalia. More in-depth qualitative and quantitative analyses of how repetitions are used and received in context are needed.

Infant-directed speech does not always involve exaggerated vowel distinctions: Evidence from Danish

This study compared the acoustic properties of 26 (100% female, 100% monolingual) Danish caregivers' spontaneous speech addressed to their 11- to 24-month-old infants (infant-directed speech, IDS) and an adult experimenter (adult-directed speech, ADS). The data were collected between 2016 and 2018 in Aarhus, Denmark. Prosodic properties of Danish IDS conformed to cross-linguistic patterns, with a higher pitch, greater pitch variability, and slower articulation rate than ADS. However, an acoustic analysis of vocalic properties revealed that Danish IDS had a reduced or similar vowel space, higher within-vowel variability, raised formants, and lower degree of vowel discriminability compared to ADS. None of the measures, except articulation rate, showed age-related differences. These results push for future research to conduct theory-driven comparisons across languages with distinct phonological systems.

Language-Specific Constraints on Conversation: Evidence from Danish and Norwegian

Establishing and maintaining mutual understanding in everyday conversations is crucial. To do so, people employ a variety of conversational devices, such as backchannels, repair, and linguistic entrainment. Here, we explore whether the use of conversational devices might be influenced by cross-linguistic differences in the speakers' native language, comparing two matched languages-Danish and Norwegian-differing primarily in their sound structure, with Danish being more opaque, that is, less acoustically distinguished. Across systematically manipulated conversational contexts, we find that processes supporting mutual understanding in conversations vary with external constraints: across different contexts and, crucially, across languages. In accord with our predictions, linguistic entrainment was overall higher in Danish than in Norwegian, while backchannels and repairs presented a more nuanced pattern. These findings are compatible with the hypothesis that native speakers of Danish may compensate for its opaque sound structure by adopting a top-down strategy of building more conversational redundancy through entrainment, which also might reduce the need for repairs. These results suggest that linguistic differences might be met by systematic changes in language processing and use. This paves the way for further cross-linguistic investigations and critical assessment of the interplay between cultural and linguistic factors on the one hand and conversational dynamics on the other.

Predicting Language in Children with ASD Using Spontaneous Language Samples and Standardized Measures

This longitudinal study examined the degree to which standardized measures of language and natural language samples predicted later language usage in a heterogeneous sample of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and how this relationship is impacted by ASD severity and interventions. Participants with a diagnosis of ASD (N = 54, 41 males) completed standardized assessments of language and social functioning; natural language samples were transcribed from play-based interactions. Findings indicated that standardized language measures, natural language measures, and ADOS severity were each unique predictors of later lexical use. Intervention types also appeared to impact later language; in particular, participation in mainstream inclusion accounted for significant amounts of variance in children's mean length of utterance at T3.

Whose Gestures are More Predictive of Expressive Language Abilities among Chinese-Speaking Children with Autism? A Comparison of Caregivers' and Children's Gestures

In spite of the close relationship between gestures and expressive language, little research has examined the roles of the parents' and children's gestures in the development of expressive language abilities in autistic children. Previous findings are also inconclusive. In the present study, we coded the gestures produced by the parents and their autistic children in parent-child interactions and compared the influence of their gestures on the children's expressive language abilities (N = 35; M = 4;10). Autistic children's deictic gestures positively predicted their Mean Length Utterance (MLU), word types, and word tokens whereas parents' deictic gesture inputs negatively predicted MLU and word types. The findings shed light on the importance of the gestures made by autistic children, which may trigger parents' gesture-to-word translation.

Caregiver linguistic alignment to autistic and typically developing children: A natural language processing approach illuminates the interactive components of language development

BACKGROUND

Language development is a highly interactive activity. However, most research on linguistic environment has focused on the quantity and complexity of linguistic input to children, with current models showing that complexity facilitates language in both typically developing (TD) and autistic children.

AIMS

After reviewing existing work on caregiver engagement of children's utterances, we aim to operationalize such engagement with automated measures of linguistic alignment, thereby providing scalable tools to assess caregivers' active reuse of their children's language. By assessing the presence of alignment, its sensitivity to the child's individual differences and how well it predicts language development beyond current models across the two groups, we showcase the usefulness of the approach and provide initial empirical foundations for further conceptual and empirical investigations.

METHODS

We measure lexical, syntactic and semantic types of caregiver alignment in a longitudinal corpus involving 32 adult-autistic child and 35 adult-TD child dyads, with children between 2 and 5 years of age. We assess the extent to which caregivers repeat their children's words, syntax, and semantics, and whether these repetitions predict language development beyond more standard predictors.

RESULTS

Caregivers tend to re-use their child's language in a way that is related to the child's individual, primarily linguistic, differences. Caregivers' alignment provides unique information improving our ability to predict future language development in both typical and autistic children.

CONCLUSIONS

We provide evidence that language development also relies on interactive conversational processes, previously understudied. We share carefully detailed methods, and open-source scripts so as to systematically extend our approach to new contexts and languages.

Frequency, Form and Function of Dyadic Questions in Children with Autism: A CHILDES corpus study

Children's questions to their caregivers - and caregivers' questions to their children - play an important role in child development. For children on the autism spectrum, who often experience cognitive, linguistic and social difficulties, prior research on questions has resulted in inconsistent and incomplete findings. The present study characterized the frequency, form, and function of queries posed by children on the autism spectrum (n = 12), non-spectrum peers (n =20), and parents using the Nadig ASD English Corpus in the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES). Results suggested that children on the autism spectrum and their caregivers produced fewer questions than non-spectrum dyads; however, whereas wh- questions were under-represented in the repertoire of children on the spectrum, they were over-represented in the repertoire of their parents. Finally, question function was similarly diverse for parents and children across groups. These findings offer important clinical implications for question-asking interventions targeting this population.

How do parents refer to their children while playing? A cross-linguistic comparison of parental input to Bulgarian- and English-speaking children with ASD

Instances of person-reference, in the form of personal pronouns, names, or terms of endearment, are frequently used in child-directed speech. Examining this aspect of parental input is especially relevant to children with autism, who experience difficulties with person-reference. In this study, we compared the person-reference during parent-child interactions of Bulgarian (N=37) and English-speaking (N=37) parents of children with autism, who were matched on the language ability of their child. English-speaking parents used significantly more personal pronouns to refer to their children, while Bulgarian-speaking parents used the child's name more along with kinship terms. Furthermore, Bulgarian-speaking parents used significantly more different ways to refer to their child. These group differences were interpreted in the context of structural differences in the pronominal systems of Bulgarian and English, and in terms of culturally different discourse practices.

A systematic review and Bayesian meta-analysis of the acoustic features of infant-directed speech

When speaking to infants, adults often produce speech that differs systematically from that directed to other adults. To quantify the acoustic properties of this speech style across a wide variety of languages and cultures, we extracted results from empirical studies on the acoustic features of infant-directed speech. We analysed data from 88 unique studies (734 effect sizes) on the following five acoustic parameters that have been systematically examined in the literature: fundamental frequency (f₀), f₀ variability, vowel space area, articulation rate and vowel duration. Moderator analyses were conducted in hierarchical Bayesian robust regression models to examine how these features change with infant age and differ across languages, experimental tasks and recording environments. The moderator analyses indicated that f₀, articulation rate and vowel duration became more similar to adult-directed speech over time, whereas f₀ variability and vowel space area exhibited stability throughout development. These results point the way for future research to disentangle different accounts of the functions and learnability of infant-directed speech by conducting theory-driven comparisons among different languages and using computational models to formulate testable predictions.

Caregiver sensitivity predicts infant language use, and infant language complexity predicts caregiver language complexity, in the context of possible emerging autism

While theory supports bidirectional effects between caregiver sensitivity and language use, and infant language acquisition-both caregiver-to-infant and also infant-to-caregiver effects-empirical research has chiefly explored the former unidirectional path. In the context of infants showing early signs of autism, we investigated prospective bidirectional associations with 6-min free-play interaction samples collected for 103 caregivers and their infants (mean age 12-months; and followed up 6-months later). We anticipated that measures of caregiver sensitivity/language input and infant language would show within-domain temporal stability/continuity, but also that there would be predictive associations from earlier caregiver input to subsequent child language, and vice versa. Caregiver sensitive responsiveness (from the Manchester Assessment of Caregiver-Infant interaction [MACI]) predicted subsequent infant word tokens (i.e., amount of language, coded following the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts [SALT]). Further, earlier infant Mean Length of Utterance (MLU; reflecting language complexity, also derived from SALT coding) predicted later caregiver MLU, even when controlling for variability in infant ages and clear within-domain temporal stability/continuity in key measures (i.e., caregiver sensitive responsiveness and infant word tokens; and infant and caregiver MLU). These data add empirical support to theorization on how caregiver input can be both supportive of, and potentially influenced by, infant capacities, when infants have social-communication differences and/or communication/language delays suggestive of possible emerging autism.

Gradual Route to Productivity: Evidence from Turkish Morphological Causatives

Becoming productive with grammatical categories is a gradual process in children's language development. Here, we investigated this transition process by focusing on Turkish causatives. Previous research examining spontaneous and elicited production of Turkish causatives with familiar verbs attested the onset and early stages of productivity at ages 2 to 3 (Aksu-Koç & Slobin, 1985; Nakipoğlu, Uzundag, & Sarıgül, 2021). So far, however, we know very little about children's understanding of causatives with novel verbs. In the present study, we asked: (a) When does the generalization of causative morphology in a novel context emerge? and (b) What role does child-directed input play in this development? To answer the first question, we conducted comprehension-judgment experiments with children aged 2;6-6;1¹ using pseudo-verbs (Study 1 & 2). Results showed that children preferred the Turkish causative suffix -DIr over an unrelated or no suffix to denote caused events earliest at age 4;10. To answer the second question, we analyzed child-directed speech from a longitudinal corpus of Turkish language acquisition (Study 3). Results showed that when addressing children younger than age 3, caregivers used the -DIr suffix with little variation considering the overall variability of verbs they could utter. Overall, these findings suggest that productivity with morphological causatives in a novel context emerges in a later stage of acquisition. This later development might partly be accounted for by the insufficient variation of morphological causatives in the early input.

Lexical Alignment and Communicative Success in Autism Spectrum Disorder

PURPOSE

Typical speakers tend to adopt words used by their conversational partners. This "lexical alignment" enhances communication by reducing ambiguity and promoting a shared understanding of the topic under discussion. Lexical alignment has been little studied to date in autism spectrum disorder (ASD); furthermore, it has been studied primarily via structured laboratory tasks that may overestimate performance. This study examined lexical alignment in ASD during discourse and explored associations with communicative success and executive function.

METHOD

Thirty-one autistic and nonautistic adolescents were paired with a study-naïve research assistant (RA) to complete a social communication task that involved taking turns verbally instructing (guiding) the partner to navigate on a map. Lexical alignment was operationalized as the proportion of shared vocabulary produced by guides on successive maps. Task accuracy was operationalized as the pixels contained within the intended and drawn routes.

RESULTS

Results indicated that autistic adolescents had greater difficulty describing navigational routes to RAs, yielding paths that were less accurate. Alignment was reduced in autistic participants, and it was associated with path accuracy for nonautistic, but not autistic, adolescents. The association between lexical alignment and executive function missed significance (p = .05); if significant, the association would indicate that greater executive function difficulty was associated with reduced lexical alignment.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings provide preliminary evidence of reduced lexical alignment in ASD in an unstructured discourse context. Moreover, positive associations between lexical alignment and task performance in the neurotypical group raise the possibility that interventions to promote the use of shared vocabulary might support better communication.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.21313719.

Child language and autism diagnosis impact hierarchical temporal structure of parent-child vocal interactions in early childhood

Timing is critical to successful social interactions. The temporal structure of dyadic vocal interactions emerges from the rhythm, timing, and frequency of each individuals' vocalizations and reflects how the dyad dynamically organizes and adapts during an interaction. This study investigated the temporal structure of vocal interactions longitudinally in parent-child dyads of typically developing (TD) infants (n = 49; 9-18 months; 48% male) and toddlers with ASD (n = 23; 27.2 ± 5.0 months; 91.3% male) to identify how developing language and social skills impact the temporal dynamics of the interaction. Acoustic hierarchical temporal structure (HTS), a measure of the nested clustering of acoustic events across multiple timescales, was measured in free play interactions using Allan Factor. HTS reflects a signal's temporal complexity and variability, with greater HTS indicating reduced flexibility of the dyadic system. Child expressive language significantly predicted HTS (ß = -0.2) longitudinally across TD infants, with greater dyadic HTS associated with lower child language skills. ASD dyads exhibited greater HTS (i.e., more rigid temporal structure) than nonverbal matched (d = 0.41) and expressive language matched TD dyads (d = 0.28). Increased HTS in ASD dyads occurred at timescales >1 s, suggesting greater structuring of pragmatic aspects of interaction. Results provide a new window into how language development and social reciprocity serve as constraints to shape parent-child interaction dynamics and showcase a novel automated approach to characterizing vocal interactions across multiple timescales during early childhood.

Revisiting the simplification of adult language input in the context of naturalistic developmental behavioral interventions: A commentary

Naturalistic developmental behavioral interventions (NDBI) are an evidence-based class of early interventions for improving language and social communication skills in autistic children. However, relatively little is known about how individual elements of NDBI support child development. This commentary focuses on one common element across NDBI models: the simplification of adult language input. Advances in developmental science focusing on the length and complexity of adult spoken utterances suggests that natural, grammatical utterances facilitate comprehension and expressive language development in autistic and nonautistic children. Yet, NDBI tend to recommend shorter and simpler adult utterances. We close by describing directions for future research which would inform recommendations around adult language input in NDBI to optimally support child language and communication development.

Parental tuning of language input to autistic and nonspectrum children

Caregivers' language input supports children's language development, and it is often tuned to the child's current level of skill. Evidence suggests that parental input is tuned to accommodate children's expressive language levels, but accommodation to receptive language abilities is less understood. In particular, little is known about parental sensitivity to children's abilities to process language in real time. Compared to nonspectrum children, children on the spectrum are slower to process language. In this study, we ask: Do parents of autistic children and those of nonspectrum children tune their language input to accommodate children's different language processing abilities? Children with and without a diagnosis of autism (ages 2-6 years, N = 35) and their parents viewed a display of six images, one of which was the target. The parent labeled the target to direct the child's attention to it. We first examined children's language processing abilities by assessing their latencies to shift gaze to the labeled referent; from this, we found slower latencies in the autistic group than in the nonspectrum group, in line with previous findings. We then examined features of parents' language and found that parents in both groups produced similar language, suggesting that parents may not adjust their language input according to children's speed of language processing. This finding suggests that (1) capturing parental sensitivity to children's receptive language, and specifically language processing, may enrich our models of individual differences in language input, and (2) future work should investigate if supporting caregivers in tuning their language use according to children's language processing can improve children's language outcomes.

Investigating the Mechanisms Driving Referent Selection and Retention in Toddlers at Typical and Elevated Likelihood for Autism Spectrum Disorder

It was suggested that children's referent selection may not lay memory traces sufficiently strong to lead to retention of new word-object mappings. If this was the case we expect incorrect selections to be easily rectified through feedback. Previous work suggested this to be the case in toddlers at typical likelihood (TL) but not in those at elevated likelihood (EL) for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (Bedford et al., ). Yet group differences in lexical knowledge may have confounded these findings. Here, TL (N = 29) and EL toddlers (N = 75) chose one of two unfamiliar objects as a referent for a new word. Both groups retained the word-referent mapping above chance when their choices were immediately reinforced but were at chance after corrective feedback. The same pattern of results was obtained when children observed another experimenter make the initial referent choice. Thus, children's referent choices lay memory traces that compete with subsequent correction; these strong word-object associations are not a result of children actively choosing potential referents for new words.

Two-year-olds at elevated risk for ASD can learn novel words from their parents

Children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often have smaller vocabularies in infancy compared to typically-developing children. To understand whether their smaller vocabularies stem from problems in learning, our study compared a prospective risk sample of 18 elevated risk and 11 lower risk 24-month-olds on current vocabulary size and word learning ability using a paradigm in which parents teach their child words. Results revealed that both groups learned novel words, even though parents indicated that infants at elevated risk of ASD knew fewer words. This suggests that these early compromised vocabularies cannot be solely linked to difficulties in word formations.

A Home-Based Approach to Auditory Brainstem Response Measurement: Proof-of-Concept and Practical Guidelines

Broad-scale neuroscientific investigations of diverse human populations are difficult to implement. This is because the primary neuroimaging methods (magnetic resonance imaging, electroencephalography [EEG]) historically have not been portable, and participants may be unable or unwilling to travel to test sites. Miniaturization of EEG technologies has now opened the door to neuroscientific fieldwork, allowing for easier access to under-represented populations. Recent efforts to conduct auditory neuroscience outside a laboratory setting are reviewed and then an in-home technique for recording auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) and frequency-following responses (FFRs) in a home setting is introduced. As a proof of concept, we have conducted two in-home electrophysiological studies: one in 27 children aged 6 to 16 years (13 with autism spectrum disorder) and another in 12 young adults aged 18 to 27 years, using portable electrophysiological equipment to record ABRs and FFRs to click and speech stimuli, spanning rural and urban and multiple homes and testers. We validate our fieldwork approach by presenting waveforms and data on latencies and signal-to-noise ratio. Our findings demonstrate the feasibility and utility of home-based ABR/FFR techniques, paving the course for larger fieldwork investigations of populations that are difficult to test or recruit. We conclude this tutorial with practical tips and guidelines for recording ABRs and FFRs in the field and discuss possible clinical and research applications of this approach.

Development of a Manualized Intervention to Support Episodic Memory in Autistic Children: Elaborative Reminiscing Is Key

Episodic memory (EM) is memory for past personal experiences. EM and social development are inextricably linked, and both are impacted in autistic persons. Parents of autistic children can be taught to engage in a unique conversational style (i.e., elaborative reminiscing) to support a child's memory and social development. This article discusses the importance of EM in autism and describes a new manualized caregiver training to support EM in autistic children. An uncontrolled pre-post study design was employed to test proof of concept. Results affirmed the potential of this intervention for increasing caregivers' elaborateness and improving children's EM in a family-centered, naturalistic way. Results suggest that further treatment development and examination of effectiveness are needed. We argue that these kinds of intervention are important: not only is EM theoretically potent for social cognitive development, it is essential for a sense of self-determination, social connection, and psychological well-being.

From woof woof to dog: Interactions between parents' use of sound symbolic words and infants' vocabulary development

Sound symbols, such as "woof woof" for a dog's barking, imitate the physical properties of their referents. Turkish is a sound symbolically rich language that allows flexible use of such words in different linguistic forms. The current study examined Turkish-speaking parents' use of sound symbolic words to their 14- and 20-month-olds and the concurrent and longitudinal relations between parents' sound symbolic input and infants' vocabulary knowledge. Thirty-four (n = 34) infants were observed at Time-1 (M_age  = 14.23 months, SD = 1.11) and Time-2 (M_age  = 20.30 months, SD = 1.24) during free play sessions with their parents to examine parental input. Infants' vocabulary knowledge was assessed by a parental report. Both the quantity and quality of parental sound symbolic input changed between 14 and 20 months of age. Furthermore, infants' earlier vocabulary knowledge at 14 months negatively predicted parents' later sound symbolic input at 20 months. Last, parents' sound symbolic input was positively and concurrently associated with 14-month-olds' vocabulary knowledge but was negatively and concurrently associated with 20-month-olds' vocabulary levels. These findings suggest an early interaction between infants' exposure to sound symbolic input and their vocabulary development.

A systematic review and Bayesian meta-analysis of the development of turn taking in adult-child vocal interactions

Fluent conversation requires temporal organization between conversational exchanges. By performing a systematic review and Bayesian multi-level meta-analysis, we map the trajectory of infants' turn-taking abilities over the course of early development (0 to 70 months). We synthesize the evidence from 26 studies (78 estimates from 429 unique infants, of which at least 152 are female) reporting response latencies in infant-adult dyadic interactions. The data were collected between 1975 and 2019, exclusively in North America and Europe. Infants took on average circa 1 s to respond, and the evidence of changes in response over time was inconclusive. Infants' response latencies are related to those of their adult conversational partners: an increase of 1 s in adult response latency (e.g., 400 to 1400 ms) would be related to an increase of over 1 s in infant response latency (from 600 to 1857 ms). These results highlight the dynamic reciprocity involved in the temporal organization of turn-taking. Based on these results, we provide recommendations for future avenues of enquiry: studies should analyze how turn-by-turn exchanges develop on a longitudinal timescale, with rich assessment of infants' linguistic and social development.

Autism Voices: A novel method to access first-person perspective of autistic youth

LAY ABSTRACT

The perspective of autistic individuals is often left uncaptured, and as a result they are often excluded from making decisions that impact them. Conventional communication can be challenging for many autistic individuals, especially those who are minimally verbal or who have an associated intellectual disability. Currently, a lack of appropriate methods to capture voices across the spectrum is a barrier. In the present study, we developed the Autism Voices protocol using universal design principles to capture the perspectives and experiences of autistic youth with a range of language or intellectual abilities. This protocol was then used with 33 autistic youth aged 11 to 18 years. A scoring rubric was developed to capture the unconventional communication used by the participants and the mitigation strategies used by interviewers to facilitate the interview. Many components of the protocol were found to effectively facilitate communication between the participant and interviewer, including the use of picture cards to support verbal questions/prompts, the fact that participants could respond with their preferred communication methods (writing, texting, pointing), and the fact that interviews were applied flexibly to adapt to each participant. Unconventional communication and mitigation strategies were mostly observed in interviews with minimally verbal individuals, but a fine-grained analysis showed participants were still communicating something through this unconventional communication. Our protocol could help promote the inclusion of more autistic individuals in research and showed that unconventional modes of communication like echolalia provide an understanding that participants' are invested in conversations and certain topics are more meaningful than others.

Parental Language Input Predicts Neuroscillatory Patterns Associated with Language Development in Toddlers at Risk of Autism

In this study we investigated the impact of parental language input on language development and associated neuroscillatory patterns in toddlers at risk of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Forty-six mother-toddler dyads at either high (n = 22) or low (n = 24) familial risk of ASD completed a longitudinal, prospective study including free-play, resting electroencephalography, and standardized language assessments. Input quantity/quality at 18 months positively predicted expressive language at 24 months, and relationships were stronger for high-risk toddlers. Moderated mediations revealed that input-language relationships were explained by 24-month frontal and temporal gamma power (30-50 Hz) for high-risk toddlers who would later develop ASD. Results suggest that high-risk toddlers may be cognitively and neurally more sensitive to their language environments, which has implications for early intervention.

Evaluating Interactive Language for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in Different Contexts

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by impairments in the use of appropriate interactive language (including structural language and pragmatic skills) in social contexts. However, the phenotype and causes of interactive language deficits in children with ASD, in different contexts, are still unclear. In this study, we examined the structural language and pragmatic skills of children with ASD in four contexts: playing, drawing, reading, and free talking. We found that while children with ASD did not exhibit deficits in structural language (e.g., vocabulary and utterance), they clearly exhibit deficits in pragmatic skills. We, also, found that contexts played a key role in the use of interactive language by children with ASD. For example, the reading context had a significant impact on the diversity of vocabulary, while the playing and drawing contexts made an important contribution to the formation of complex utterances. The free talking context, on the other hand, contributed to producing more turns. Furthermore, Spearman’s rank correlation analysis was used to examine the relationships between maternal input and children’s language output. We found that the correlations between structural language and maternal input in children with ASD were not as high as revealed in previous studies, while a, relatively, obvious relationship was found between pragmatic skills and maternal input. Specifically, the total number of turns (TNT) for a child with ASD is related to their mother’s TNT, as are the total number of words (TNW) and number of different words (NDW). These results suggest that (1) assessment of pragmatic skills should be included in the evaluation of children with suspected ASD (2) the influence of context on pragmatic skills needs to be taken into account, when assessing the pragmatic development of children with ASD; and (3) the impact of maternal language on children’s language use is of great importance, for children with ASD.

Caregiver Language Input Supports Sentence Diversity in Young Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

PURPOSE

Sentence diversity is a measure of early language development that has yet to be applied to individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The primary aim of this study was to identify whether children with ASD show change in sentence diversity over 6 months of treatment with Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Intervention (NDBI). The secondary aim was to examine possible predictors of changes in children's sentence diversity, including caregiver use of NDBI strategies, naturally occurring instances of caregiver Toy Talk, and child characteristics.

METHOD

Fifty children with ASD (ages 2-4 years) and their caregivers, who were receiving NDBI, engaged in two 10-min video-recorded play interactions, 6 months apart. Child speech was transcribed and coded for sentence diversity. Caregiver input was transcribed and coded for naturally occurring Toy Talk. Zero-inflated negative binomial mixed models were used to explore predictors of change in child sentence diversity.

RESULTS

Children's sentence diversity improved over time. Changes in caregiver NDBI strategy use and caregiver baseline Toy Talk were significant predictors of changes in sentence diversity, as were baseline age, nonverbal ratio IQ, and child sex. Additionally, a significant interaction of caregiver baseline Toy Talk and change in caregiver NDBI strategies emerged; the effect of caregiver baseline Toy Talk on children's sentence diversity change was stronger when NDBI strategy use improved.

CONCLUSIONS

Sentence diversity is a developmentally sensitive measure of language development in ASD. NDBI strategies that facilitate reciprocal social communication, combined with input composed of declarative sentences with noun or third-person pronoun subjects, may provide optimal support for children's sentence development.

Early Word Order Usage in Preschool Mandarin-Speaking Typical Children and Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: Influences of Caregiver Input?

This study explores the emergence and productivity of word order usage in Mandarin-speaking typically-developing (TD) children and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and examines how this emergence relates to frequency of use in caregiver input. Forty-two caregiver-child dyads participated in video-recorded 30-min semi-structured play sessions. Eleven children with ASD were matched with 10 20-month-old TD children and another 11 children with ASD were matched with 10 26-month-old TD children, on expressive language. We report four major findings: (1) Preschool Mandarin-speaking children with ASD produced word order structures with pervasive ellipsis at similar rates to language-matched TD children, but also displayed differences from TD children in their usage of SVt and VtO frames; (2) Grammatical productivity was observed in both TD children and children with ASD; moreover, children with ASD with higher expressive language produced less stereotyped language; (3) Both TD children and children with ASD heard a range of word orders in their caregivers’ input, with TD children’s input greater in amount and complexity; however, caregivers of both groups also showed no age/language-related changes in word order usage; (4) Few word-order-specific correlations emerged between caregivers and their children; however, strong correlations were observed for mean length of utterances (MLU) for both groups: Caregivers who produced longer/more complex utterances had children who did the same. Taken together, it seems that despite their pragmatic deficits, the early grammatical knowledge of word order in Mandarin-exposed children with ASD is well preserved and in general follows the typical developmental pattern. Moreover, caregiver input is broadly rather than finely tuned to the linguistic development of TD children and children with ASD, and plays a more important role in children’s general syntactic development than in specific word order acquisition. Thus, early word order usage in preschool Mandarin-speaking TD children and children with ASD may be influenced by both caregiver input and child abilities.

Early development in autism: How developmental cascades help us understand the emergence of developmental differences

Many theories of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) focus on a single system or factor as an explanatory mechanism for autism symptoms and behavior. However, there is growing recognition that ASD is a complex, multisystem neurodevelopmental condition with origins in prenatal life. Researchers therefore need a conceptual framework that allows examination of the interplay between multiple interacting domains and systems and the ways in which they extend their influence beyond the individual into the surrounding environment. The developmental cascades perspective suggests that even relatively small perturbations in early emerging behaviors in domains that are not traditionally linked may influence subsequent achievements across these areas. In this chapter, we illustrate how a developmental cascades framework can be used to inform the study of developmental differences. The developmental cascades perspective provides us with conceptual and methodological tools for considering how variation in children's real time behavior can provide new insights into sources of variation in their developmental trajectories and outcomes. It also suggests approaches for intervention that leverage targeted skills in novel ways, creating opportunities to support development in other domains and fine-tune caregiver behavior to create powerful moments for infant learning.

Autistic preschoolers' engagement and language use in gross motor versus symbolic play settings

Background and aims: Although adjustment of the environment is recommended as a support strategy in evidence-based interventions for children with autism, the impact of doing so (and the how and why) is not well understood. One essential environmental factor to consider when providing supports for preschool-aged autistic children is the play setting, specifically, the materials available in the child's play context. The aim of this study was to compare engagement states and number of utterances produced by preschool-aged autistic children within symbolic vs. gross motor play settings. Examining the relationship between gross motor play settings and children's social engagement and spoken language use is particularly important to explore for autistic children given differences in their sensory processing, motor skill development, and choice of and interaction with toys relative to neurotypical peers. Methods: Seventy autistic children aged 25-57 months were videotaped during natural play interactions with a parent. Children's social engagement and number of spoken utterances were examined in five minutes each of play with symbolic toys and play with gross motor toys. Continuous time-tagged video coding of the child-caregiver engagement states was conducted, and the child's frequency of spoken language was identified using language sample analysis. The specific variables examined were; (a) engagement with caregiver, (b) engagement with objects only, (c) unengaged (no evident engagement with objects or people), and (d) total number of spoken utterances. The relationship between play setting (symbolic vs gross motor) and child language and engagement state variables was examined with linear mixed effects modelling. Results: Significant main effects were revealed for the interaction between play setting and autistic children's engagement. Young autistic children were more likely to engage with caregivers in play environments with gross motor toys (moderate effect) and also were more likely to have periods of unengaged time (not overtly directing their attention to objects or people; small effect) in this setting. Further, when in a setting with symbolic toys, autistic children were more likely to spend their time focusing attention solely on objects (large effect). No interaction was found between play setting and total number of utterances spoken by autistic children. Conclusions and implications: This study confirmed the importance of continued research focused on understanding the relationship between children's play settings and their social engagement and language use. Although preliminary, findings support the idea that there is an interaction between preschool-aged autistic children's social engagement and their play settings. Further, our results suggest that there can be value in clinicians differentiating children's play settings (i.e., gross motor vs symbolic) when assessing and supporting social engagement capacities of young autistic children.

Toward a cumulative science of vocal markers of autism: A cross-linguistic meta-analysis-based investigation of acoustic markers in American and Danish autistic children

Acoustic atypicalities in speech production are argued to be potential markers of clinical features in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A recent meta-analysis highlighted shortcomings in the field, in particular small sample sizes and study heterogeneity. We showcase a cumulative (i.e., explicitly building on previous studies both conceptually and statistically) yet self-correcting (i.e., critically assessing the impact of cumulative statistical techniques) approach to prosody in ASD to overcome these issues. We relied on the recommendations contained in the meta-analysis to build and analyze a cross-linguistic corpus of multiple speech productions in 77 autistic and 72 neurotypical children and adolescents (>1000 recordings in Danish and US English). We used meta-analytically informed and skeptical priors, with informed priors leading to more generalizable inference. We replicated findings of a minimal cross-linguistically reliable distinctive acoustic profile for ASD (higher pitch and longer pauses) with moderate effect sizes. We identified novel reliable differences between the two groups for normalized amplitude quotient, maxima dispersion quotient, and creakiness. However, the differences were small, and there is likely no one acoustic profile characterizing all autistic individuals. We identified reliable relations of acoustic features with individual differences (age, gender), and clinical features (speech rate and ADOS sub-scores). Besides cumulatively building our understanding of acoustic atypicalities in ASD, the study shows how to use systematic reviews and meta-analyses to guide the design and analysis of follow-up studies. We indicate future directions: larger and more diverse cross-linguistic datasets, focus on heterogeneity, self-critical cumulative approaches, and open science. LAY SUMMARY: Autistic individuals are reported to speak in distinctive ways. Distinctive vocal production can affect social interactions and social development and could represent a noninvasive way to support the assessment of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We systematically checked whether acoustic atypicalities highlighted in previous articles could be actually found across multiple recordings and two languages. We find a minimal acoustic profile of ASD: higher pitch, longer pauses, increased hoarseness and creakiness of the voice. However, there is much individual variability (by age, sex, language, and clinical characteristics). This suggests that the search for one common "autistic voice" might be naive and more fine-grained approaches are needed.

The influence of child-based factors and parental inputs on expressive language abilities in children with autism spectrum disorder

LAY ABSTRACT

Language impairment is one of the early signs of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) that alerts parents to take their children for early diagnosis and intervention. Little is known about how children's autism traits, IQ, initial language abilities and parental inputs influence their language abilities. In addition, only a few studies have compared the relative influence of these factors. The present study addressed these issues by examining the structural language in parent-child spontaneous interactions. Forty-two Cantonese (Chinese)-speaking autistic children aged four to eight were recruited. Their expressive language skills grew rapidly more than 9 months, but their development trajectories varied. Initial expressive language ability is the only significant predictor of child language outcomes and language growth trajectories. In contrast, nonverbal cognition, autism traits, and parents' input do not affect language outcomes in children with ASD. Therefore, early language intervention is crucial for autistic children at all severity and IQ levels.

Maternal Use of Decontextualized and Contextualized Talk: An In-Depth Investigation of Early Parent-Child Interactions in Down Syndrome

Purpose The goal of this study was to characterize and quantify maternal use of decontextualized and contextualized input during mother-child interactions including young children with Down syndrome (DS). Method Participants included 22 mother-child dyads with DS (M age = 42.8 months) and 22 mother-child dyads with typical development (M age = 44.0 months). Parent-child language samples were collected during free-play, book reading, and snack time, and coded for maternal decontextualized (i.e., pretend, explanatory, and narrative talk) and contextualized input (i.e., descriptions, conversation, praise, questions, and directives). Results Mothers of children with DS used a larger proportion of pretend talk compared to other types of decontextualized input and also used a larger proportion of questions, conversation, and descriptions compared to other types of contextualized language. Mothers of children with DS generally used a smaller proportion of decontextualized input compared to mothers of children with typical development, with the exception of pretend talk. Maternal decontextualized input was not related to children's age or language ability in DS. Conclusions Findings shed new light on the early language environments of children with DS, providing important insight into the ways that mothers of children with DS are incorporating decontextualized and contextualized talk into early mother-child conversations. Additional implications and future directions are discussed.

Joint Engagement, Parent Labels, and Language Development: Examining Everyday Interactions in Infant Siblings of Children with Autism

This study examined joint engagement, parent labels, and language development in infants with an elevated (EL) and typical likelihood (TL) for ASD. Parent-child interactions were coded for joint engagement and parent labels at 12 and 18 months, and language skills were assessed later in toddlerhood for 12 EL infants diagnosed with ASD (EL-ASD), 17 EL infants with language delay (EL-LD), 14 EL infants with no diagnosis (EL-ND), and 12 TL infants. Infants spent substantial time in supported joint engagement and received similar rates of input from parents across outcome groups. However, parents of EL-ASD infants increased the rate of labels provided in coordinated joint engagement. While labels positively predicted language for TL infants, the opposite pattern emerged for EL-ASD infants.

A Systematic Literature Review of Autism Research on Caregiver Talk

Describing how caregivers' talk to their autistic children, and how their talk may influence social and language outcomes, has important implications for developmental theory and intervention research. In this systematic literature review, we examine 294 caregiver talk variables extracted from 65 studies, provide a narrative overview of research findings, and link measurement approaches to various theories of language development. The majority of variables included only talk directed to children (90%), and specified the speech act being performed (57%). More than one-third of variables measured talk that was responsive to children's attention, activities, or communication (38%), and slightly less than a third measured variables that elicited children's communication or engagement. Semantic aspects of talk were specified in 41% of variables, structural features were measured in 20% of variables, and suprasegmental features were measured in only 1% of variables. Talk quantity (without reference to other aspects of talk) was measured in 8% of variables. We found strong support that talk related to children's attention is implicated in autistic children's language development, but this construct has been measured inconsistently in terms of semantic, structural, and functional features. There is also evidence for bi-directional relationships between caregiver's talk and autistic children's development on a variety of semantic and structural variables. LAY SUMMARY: In our review, we found many differences in how researchers measured caregiver's talk, but also some promising leads. Researchers should continue examining caregiver talk related to children's focus of attention to clarify how this type of language contributes to autistic children's development. We also found interesting research on how children influence caregiver's talk, and encourage researchers to continue to study how this occurs.

A Comparison of Natural Language Samples Collected From Minimally and Low-Verbal Children and Adolescents With Autism by Parents and Examiners

Purpose We aimed to compare the speech of parents and examiners as they elicited language samples from minimally and low-verbal (MLV) children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), while following the same semi-structured elicitation protocol, Eliciting Language Samples for Analysis-Adolescents (ELSA-A). We also compared the speech elicited from the MLV children/adolescents by their parents at home and by trained examiners in the lab and assessed the feasibility of parents collecting language samples at home. Method Thirty-three (five female, 28 male) MLV children and adolescents with ASD between the ages of 6;6 and 19;7 (years;months) participated. All participants were administered standardized assessments, and a trained examiner collected an ELSA-A language sample from them in the lab. The parents of 22 of the children/adolescents collected an ELSA-A sample at home. All language samples were transcribed following standard procedures, and measures of expressive language were extracted to assess the quantity of speech, its syntactic complexity, and lexical diversity. At the end of the study, parents filled out a feedback survey about their experiences collecting ELSA-A. Results On average, parents produced twice as much speech as trained examiners during ELSA-A. However, their speech did not differ in syntactic complexity or lexical diversity. When with their parents, the MLV children/adolescents also produced twice as much speech than with trained examiners. In addition, their samples were more lexically diverse. Overall, parents elicited longer language samples but administered fewer of the ELSA-A activities. Nevertheless, the majority of parents rated the experience of collecting language samples at home favorably. Conclusions When parents collect language samples at home, their older MLV children/adolescents with ASD produce more speech and engage in more back-and-forth verbal interactions than when with trained examiners. Because parent-elicited language samples allow for a richer assessment of children's expressive language abilities, future studies should focus on identifying ways to encourage parents to collect data at home.

Association between neighbourhood socioeconomic status and developmental vulnerability of kindergarten children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A population level study

There is limited knowledge about the relationship between neighbourhood socioeconomic status (SES) and development of kindergarten children with ASD. The primary objective of this study was to determine the association between neighbourhood SES and developmental vulnerability of kindergarten children with ASD while controlling for family SES across 10 provinces and territories in Canada. This study used data from a population level database of child development in kindergarten, collected with the Early Development Instrument (EDI). The EDI covers five broad domains of developmental health: physical health and well-being, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive development, and communication skills and general knowledge. Neighbourhood SES was assessed with an SES index created using 10 variables from the 2011 Canadian Census and 2010 Taxfiler data. Family SES was assessed using 4 variables from the 2016 Canadian Census. Descriptive statistics and regression-based models were used in this study. Multilevel binary logistic regression analyses were used to examine the association between neighbourhood SES and child developmental vulnerability (yes/no), at the individual level, while controlling for family SES, demographic characteristics, and neighbourhood clustering. The association between neighbourhood SES and child developmental vulnerability at the individual level, while controlling for family SES and demographic characteristics was examined with binary single level logistic regression analyses. Multivariable linear regression analyses were used to examine the association between neighbourhood SES and developmental vulnerability at the neighbourhood level (% of kindergarten children with ASD demonstrating developmental vulnerability in a neighbourhood). In Ontario, British Columbia, Manitoba, and Newfoundland and Labrador, higher neighbourhood SES was associated with lower likelihood of developmental vulnerability. In Nova Scotia, higher neighbourhood SES was associated with higher likelihood of vulnerability in the social competence and communication skills and general knowledge domains. These findings emphasize the importance of addressing neighbourhood deprivation to support the development of children with ASD. Additionally, the inconsistency highlights the importance of examining the mechanisms through which neighbourhood SES impacts development of these children on a provincial basis.

Eliciting Language Samples for Analysis (ELSA): A New Protocol for Assessing Expressive Language and Communication in Autism

Expressive language and communication are among the key targets of interventions for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and natural language samples provide an optimal approach for their assessment. Currently, there are no protocols for collecting such samples that cover a wide range of ages or language abilities, particularly for children/adolescents who have very limited spoken language. We introduce a new protocol for collecting language samples, eliciting language samples for analysis (ELSA), and a novel approach for deriving basic measures of verbal communicative competence from it that bypasses the need for time-consuming transcription. Study 1 presents ELSA-adolescents (ELSA-A), designed for minimally and low-verbal older children/adolescents with ASD. The protocol successfully engaged and elicited speech from 46 participants across a wide range of ages (6;6-19;7) with samples averaging 20-25 min. The collected samples were segmented into speaker utterances (examiner and participant) using real-time coding as one is listening to the audio recording and two measures were derived: frequency of utterances and conversational turns per minute. These measures were shown to be reliable and valid. For Study 2, ELSA was adapted for younger children (ELSA-Toddler [ELSA-T]) with samples averaging 29 min from 19 toddlers (2;8-4;10 years) with ASD. Again, measures of frequency of utterances and conversational turns derived from ELSA-T were shown to have strong psychometric properties. In Study 3, we found that ELSA-A and ELSA-T were equivalent in eliciting language from 17 children with ASD (ages: 4;0-6;8), demonstrating their suitability for deriving robust objective assessments of expressive language that could be used to track change in ability over time. We introduce a new protocol for collecting expressive language samples, ELSA, that can be used with a wide age range, from toddlers (ELSA-T) to older adolescents (ELSA-A) with ASD who have minimal or low-verbal abilities. The measures of language and communication derived from them, frequency of utterances, and conversational turns per minute, using real-time coding methods, can be used to characterize ability and chart change in intervention research. LAY SUMMARY: We introduce a new protocol for collecting expressive language samples, ELSA, that can be used with a wide age range, from toddlers (ELSA-T) to older adolescents (ELSA-A) with autism spectrum disorder who have minimal or low-verbal abilities. The measures of language and communication derived from them, frequency of utterances and conversational turns per minute, using real-time coding methods, can be used to characterize ability and chart change in intervention research.

Phonetic discrimination mediates the relationship between auditory brainstem response stability and syntactic performance

Syntactic, lexical, and phonological/phonetic knowledge are vital aspects of macro level language ability. Prior research has predominantly focused on environmental or cortical sources of individual differences in these areas; however, a growing literature suggests an auditory brainstem contribution to language performance in both typically developing (TD) populations and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study investigates whether one aspect of auditory brainstem responses (ABRs), neural response stability, which is a metric reflecting trial-by-trial consistency in the neural encoding of sound, can predict syntactic, lexical, and phonetic performance in TD and ASD school-aged children. Pooling across children with ASD and TD, results showed that higher neural stability in response to the syllable /da/ was associated with better phonetic discrimination, and with better syntactic performance on a standardized measure. Furthermore, phonetic discrimination was a successful mediator of the relationship between neural stability and syntactic performance. This study supports the growing body of literature that stable subcortical neural encoding of sound is important for successful language performance.

Content Words in Child-Directed Speech of Mothers Toward Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Purpose Our study aimed to analyze the characteristics of content word usage in mother's child-directed speech ( CDS) toward children with autism spectrum disorder compared to mother's CDS toward typically developing children. Method We analyzed the lexical characteristics of CDS of mothers of children with autism (16 dyads) and compared them from a language developmental perspective to mothers of 20 typical children at the same level of expressive language development. Results Results suggest that mothers of children with autism use equal amounts of content words at the same language level, but the content consists of significantly more concrete nouns and active verbs and rarely the use of abstract nouns, stative verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Conclusion This study suggests that professionals and parents of children with autism should be aware of the importance of varying their language use of content words.