Consonant differentiation mediates the discrepancy between non-verbal and verbal abilities in children with ASD.

BACKGROUND: Many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate verbal communication disorders reflected in lower verbal than non-verbal abilities. The present study examined the extent to which this discrepancy is associated with atypical speech sound differentiation. METHODS: Differences in the amplitude of auditory event-related potentials elicited by contrasting consonant-vowel syllables during a passive listening paradigm were used to assess speech sound differentiation in 24 children with ASD and 18 chronological age-matched children with typical development (TD), M age 6.90 years (SD = 1.39). RESULTS: Results revealed that compared with TD peers, children with ASD showed reduced consonant differentiation in the 84- to 308-ms period. Brain responses indexing consonant differentiation were negatively related to the degree of discrepancy in non-verbal and verbal abilities and mediated the relationship between diagnostic group membership and the greater discrepancy. CONCLUSIONS: We discuss the theoretical and clinical implications of the brain's response to speech sound contrasts possibly explaining the greater non-verbal versus language ability in children with ASD compared with that in typically developing children.

Speech following sign language training in autistic children with minimal verbal language.

This study was carried out to test the main and interaction effects of training condition and pretreatment-elicited verbal imitation ability when predicting spoken language use during language training of 60 minimally verbal autistic children. Subjects were randomly assigned to Speech Alone, Sign Alone, Simultaneous Presentation of Sign and Speech, and Alternating Presentation of Sign and Speech training conditions. Speech Alone, Simultaneous Presentation, and Alternating Presentation condition facilitated more child-initiated speech during treatment than did the Sign Alone condition. Regardless of training condition, pretreatment verbal imitation ability positively predicted the size of child-initiated spoken vocabulary observed during training. Exploratory analyses indicated that, in addition to verbal imitation, pretreatment age and IQ may also predict spoken language developed during training.

Nonverbal communication in two- and three-year-old children with autism.

The forms, functions, and complexity of nonverbal communication used by very young children with autism were investigated. Fourteen children with autism were matched to 14 children with developmental delays and/or language impairments on the basis of CA, MA, and expressive vocabulary. Subjects participated in a structured communication assessment consisting of 16 situations designed to elicit requesting or commenting behavior. Children with autism requested more often and commented less often than controls. Autistic children were less likely to point, show objects, or use eye gaze to communicate, but were more likely to directly manipulate the examiner's hand. The autistic group also used less complex combinations of behaviors to communicate. Implications for early identification and intervention are discussed.

Mothers' attributions of communication to prelinguistic behavior of developmentally delayed and mentally retarded infants.

Some investigators have suggested that mothers of severely handicapped infants do not attribute communication to their infants' behavior as frequently as do other mothers because such infants exhibit developmentally younger and more ambiguous behavior. This premise was tested, and several factors that may influence the frequency with which mothers attribute communication to their babies' behavior were examined. Sixteen mother-handicapped infant pairs participated. Results did not support the simple notion that mothers of severely handicapped babies attribute less communication than do mothers of mildly handicapped infants. Results suggest that the mothers' attributions of communication may be influenced by a number of factors besides the actual behavior emitted by the infants, factors that may allow the mothers to interact effectively with an even severely handicapped baby.

Do children with developmental delays use more frequent and diverse language in verbal routines?

The current study is the first to test the hypotheses that children with developmental delays use more frequent language and more diverse vocabulary in routines than in nonroutines. The 19 child participants were in Brown's (1973) first stage of language learning. Using a novel method of measuring routines, 18 of the parents identified at least one routine in a videotaped play session with their children. Results support both hypotheses and provide descriptive information about the content of the routines displayed by the parents and children in the free-play context. The importance of replicating the findings in the context of an experimental design before concluding that "routineness" caused the children to talk more often and with more diverse vocabulary was emphasized.

Intentional communication elicits language-facilitating maternal responses in dyads with children who have developmental disabilities.

An experimental test of whether intentional communication elicits maternal responses purported to facilitate language development is presented. Fifty-eight prelinguistic children with disabilities and their mothers participated. Children were randomly assigned to two staff-implemented treatments that were designed to experimentally increase intentional communication ability. We predicted that treatment effects on maternal responses would vary by maternal education level and maternal responsive interaction style at the pretreatment period. We predicted any treatment effect on maternal responses would be mediated by posttreatment intentional communication. Results indicated that treatment effects on maternal responses varied by pretreatment maternal education level. A pattern of results also supports the conclusion that posttreatment intentional communication to mother was, at least in part, responsible for the effect on posttreatment maternal responses.

Adult interaction style effects on the language sampling and transcription process with children who have development disabilities.

A determination was made of whether an empirically derived interaction style improves the usefulness of the language sampling and transcription in 17 children with developmental disabilities in Brown's (1973) Stages I and II. Whether the interaction style affected the diversity and complexity of the language the children produced during the samples was also examined. All subjects experienced two 20-minute interaction sessions that differed according to whether topic-continuing wh-questions were used. Results indicated that, regardless of order of exposure to the styles, children talked more often and produced proportionally more transcribable utterances. In addition, they produced a larger sample of productive vocabulary in the style using topic-continuing wh-questions. There were no style effects on vocabulary diversity or length of utterance. The importance of using interaction styles that maximize the information available from language samples of young children with disabilities was discussed.

Predicting spoken language level in children with autism spectrum disorders.

Thirty-five children who received an autism spectrum diagnosis at the age of 2 years (24 with autism, 11 with PDD-NOS) were re-evaluated 2 years later to examine factors related to the development of spoken language. Child variables (play level, motor imitation ability and joint attention) and environmental variables (socioeconomic status and hours of speech/language therapy between ages 2 and 3) were used to predict an aggregate measure of language outcome at age 4. After controlling for age 2 language skills, the only significant predictors were motor imitation and number of hours of speech/language therapy. Implications of these results for understanding the early developmental course of autism spectrum disorders and the effects of intervention are discussed.

Maternal responsivity predicts the prelinguistic communication intervention that facilitates generalized intentional communication.

Family systems theory posits that the relative effectiveness of early interventions will vary depending on various aspects of the family. This study tested whether maternal responsivity would predict the extent to which Prelinguistic Milieu Teaching (PMT) facilitated generalized intentional communication better than a contrast treatment that was conducted in a small group by a responsive adult (i.e., Responsive Small Group, RSG). Fifty-eight children with developmental disabilities in the prelinguistic communication period of development were randomly assigned to one of the two staff-implemented treatment groups. Thirty were assigned to RSG; 28 were assigned to PMT. Mothers were kept naive to the intervention methods, hypotheses, and measures. In families with mothers who responded to a high percentage of the children's communication acts at the pre-treatment period, the children in the PMT group used more frequent intentional communication in post-treatment generalization sessions with a trainer and mothers than did children in the RSG group. In the families with mothers who responded to fewer than 39% of their children's communication acts, children in the RSG intervention used more frequent intentional communication in post-treatment generalization sessions with the mothers than did children in the PMT intervention. Other family variables and no child variables that we measured could account for these findings.

Relative treatment effects of two prelinguistic communication interventions on language development in toddlers with developmental delays vary by maternal characteristics.

This paper tests whether two prelinguistic communication interventions have a differential effect on productive and receptive language development 6 and 12 months after the end of treatment. We predicted that treatment effects on language development would vary as a function of pretreatment maternal responsivity or amount of mothers' formal education. Fifty-eight prelinguistic children with developmental delays and their mothers participated in the study. Children were randomly assigned to one of two staff-implemented treatments that were designed to increase intentional communication ability. Results confirmed the prediction that treatment effects on children's receptive and expressive language 6 and 12 months after the end of interventions vary as a function of pretreatment maternal responsivity and education level.

The relationship between prelinguistic vocalization and later expressive vocabulary in young children with developmental delay.

This study tested the relationship between prelinguistic vocalization and expressive vocabulary 1 year later in young children with mild to moderate developmental delays. Three vocalization variables were tested: rate of all vocalization, rate of vocalizations with consonants, and rate of vocalizations used interactively. The 58 toddlers in the study were 17-34 months old, not sensory impaired, and had Bayley Mental Development Indices (Bayley, 1969; Bayley, 1993) from 35-85. In addition, the children had fewer than 3 words in their expressive vocabularies and during classroom observation each showed at least one instance of intentional prelinguistic communication before testing. Selected sections of the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales procedures (CSBS; Wetherby & Prizant, 1993) were administered at the beginning and at the end of the study. The vocal measures were obtained in the initial CSBS session. One measure of expressive vocabulary was obtained in the CSBS session at the end of the study. In addition, expressive vocabulary was measured in a nonstructured play session at the end of the study. We predicted that rate of vocalization, rate of vocalizations with consonants, and rate of vocalizations used interactively would all be positively related to later expressive vocabulary. The results confirmed the predictions.

Relationship between degree of infant handicap and clarity of infant cues.

Dunst (1983) suggested that severely handicapped infants' intentional and unintentional communicative behaviors may be less interpretable or less easily "read" than are those of less handicapped infants. This hypothesis was tested in a sample of 15 pairs of mothers and their handicapped 11-month-old infants. As expected, the results indicated that coders agreed on the occurrence of an infant cue a lower percentage of the time when coding severely handicapped infants than when coding less handicapped infants.

Maternal question use predicts later language development in specific-language-disordered children.

The present study used a longitudinal correlational design to test whether variation in mothers' use of information-seeking and confirmation questions predicts variation in auxiliary and copula development in a sample of specific-language-disordered children. The study's confirmatory approach provides a sound empirical basis to conclude that the results of the present study did not occur by chance. Post hoc analyses were carried out to clarify the explanation of the predictive relationships. The main finding of the study was that mothers of specific-language-disordered children who used proportionally more information-seeking questions had children who showed greater mastery of auxiliary use 12 months later.

Alternative explanations for the relationship between maternal verbal interaction style and child language development.

The present study analysed formerly unexamined indirect routes for relationships between time 1 maternal speech and later child language development. Ten normally developing children in Brown's early stage 1 and their mothers were the subjects. For each dyad, two free-play sessions occurring five months apart were videotaped in the subjects' homes. Mothers' pragmatic language use was coded from time 1 sessions. Child language level was coded at both sessions. Even though time 1 scores of the outcome were controlled, seven of the ten relationships involving mother speech and child language development were indirectly related through one of two time 1 child language measures. The results indicate that a mother-driven, direct influence model may be inappropriate for many mother speech-child language development relationships. We argue that child-driven and mother-driven explanatory models for the indirect relationships are equally feasible.

Mother-infant engagements in dyads with handicapped and nonhandicapped infants: a pilot study.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a handicapping condition on mother-infant interactions and, to investigate the conditions under which coordinated attention to an object and a person is demonstrated. This study provides a unique opportunity to make across-mother and within-mother comparisons of mother-infant interactions in two sets of fraternal twins. In each set, one infant was handicapped whereas the other was nonhandicapped. Microanalyses of several aspects of mother-infant free-play sessions showed that handicapped infants emitted fewer object-directed behaviors, had fewer instances in which their leads were followed, and spent relatively little time in joint attention with mother. The data also suggest that repetitive sequences with an object may be an important context in which coordinated attention is demonstrated.

Do parental questions and topic continuations elicit replies from developmentally delayed children? A sequential analysis.

This sequential analysis tested the relative extent to which several adult utterance types elicited conversational replies from developmentally delayed children. Eight developmentally delayed children in Brown's stages I and II and their primary parents were the subjects. Parent-child pairs were video and audio taped during their interactions with experimenter-provided toys in a lab setting. Transcripts of the interactions were coded for adult topic relatedness and obligation level and for child topic relatedness, length, and intelligibility. The results indicated that child replies of any length were elicited by adult topic continuations more than by any other adult utterance type. If a new topic was initiated, explicit prompts for child talk elicited child replies more than other adult utterance types. Multiword child replies were most likely to be elicited by explicit prompts that continued the child's topic. Child effects on the presence and effectiveness of adult conversational recruiting strategies were also tested.

Comparison of the types of child utterances mothers expand in children with language delays and with Down's syndrome.

Sixteen children with language delays and their mothers were studied to identify the types of child utterances mothers were most likely to expand. Eight of these children had Down's syndrome (DS), while the other eight were pairwise-matched for mean length of utterance (MLU) and did not have DS, but were language delayed. Twenty-minute mother-child free-play sessions were videotaped and transcribed. Trained observers coded utterances for child intelligibility, child utterance length, adult expansions and adult non-expansions. Sequential analysis results indicated that mothers of children with DS were more likely to expand partially intelligible multi-word utterances than to expand fully intelligible multi-word utterances. The opposite pattern occurred in the dyads without DS. Single-word utterances were least likely to be expanded in both groups. The implications of the results for language intervention and future research are discussed.

An exploratory study of the interaction between language teaching methods and child characteristics.

The present study examined whether the relative efficacy of two language teaching methods was predicted by pretreatment subject characteristics. Forty handicapped preschoolers were randomly assigned to two language teaching methods (i.e., Milieu Teaching and the Communication Training Program). No main effects of treatment were found. However, seven statistical interactions between pretreatment subject characteristics and language teaching method indicated that lower-functioning children benefitted more from the Milieu method and higher-functioning children benefitted more from the Communication Training Program. The results were discussed in relation to the extant literature reporting subject-by-language-teaching-method interactions. The importance of replicating the present results and specific suggestions for subject selection criteria and pretreatment subject characteristics likely to interact with language teaching methods similar to those used in this study are discussed.

Comparing sequential associations within a single dyad.

We present a new application of sampled permutation testing to examine whether two sequential associations are different within a single dyad (e.g., a teacher and a student). A Monte Carlo simulation with the same (i.e., 100 vs. 100) or a different (100 vs. 400) number of event pairs was used to simulate designs that use time-based (typically producing equal-length comparisons) and event-based (typically producing different-length comparisons) data, respectively. For these pairs of simulated data streams, we compared the Type I error rates and the kappa for agreement on significance decisions, using the sampled permutation tests and the more traditional asymptotic log linear analysis. The results provide the first evidence relevant to evaluating the accuracy of log linear analysis and sampled permutation testing for the purpose of comparing sequential associations within a single dyad.

Effect of adult continuing wh-questions on conversational participation in children with developmental disabilities.

Children with developmental disabilities often converse less frequently than their developmentally matched peers. This low conversational participation can cause problems for the children's future language and discourse development. The purpose of this experimental study was to test the hypothesis that adult topic-continuing wh-questions would elicit topic continuations in children with relatively low language ability, but not in children with relatively high language ability. Twenty-three children with developmental delays interacted with an adult who conducted two play sessions. In each session, the adult used a different interaction style. The two styles differed in the adult's use of topic-continuing wh-questions. Results indicate that adult use of topic-continuing wh-questions supported the use of child continuations in children at all language levels. The type of continuations (single word versus multiword) that were elicited depended on the language level of the children. Clinical implications are discussed.