Social and joint attention during shared book reading in young autistic children: a potential marker for social development.

BACKGROUND: Atypical patterns of social engagement and joint attention behaviors are diagnostic criteria for people with autism spectrum disorder. Experimental tasks using eye-tracking methodologies have, however, shown inconsistent results. The development of tasks with greater ecological validity and relevance for developmentally appropriate social milestones has been identified as important for the field. METHODS: We developed a novel, dynamic eye-tracking task emulating a shared book reading (SBR) scenario. Four SBR videos of an adult reader engaging with the viewer while reading a children's picture book and including sequenced bids for joint attention were developed. Participants included 90 children (N = 56 autistic children, N = 34 neurotypical children; aged 3-12). Social attention was also measured in a live free play task between participants and an experimenter. RESULTS: Compared to neurotypical children, autistic children displayed reduced attention to socially salient stimuli including the reader's face and picture book across SBR videos and during joint attention bids specifically. In contrast, they showed increased attention to nonsalient background stimuli compared to their neurotypical peers. These attention patterns in autistic children were associated with reduced verbal and nonverbal cognitive skills and increased symptoms associated with autism. Interestingly, positive correlations in the frequency of eye gaze between SBR and free play suggested a potential predictive value for social attention in live social interactions. CONCLUSIONS: Findings highlight the utility of SBR eye-tracking tasks in understanding underlying divergences in social engagement and joint attention between autistic and neurotypical children. This commonly practiced early childhood activity may provide insights into the relationship between social engagement and learning to reveal how such attentional patterns might influence broader developmental and educational outcomes.

Towards a unifying caring life-course theory for better self-care and caring solutions: A discussion paper.

AIM: To present the first iteration of the caring life-course theory. BACKGROUND: Despite requiring care from birth to death, a person's universal or fundamental care needs and the subsequent care provision, either by self or others, has yet to be presented within a life-course perspective. Accurately describing the care people require across their lifespan enables us to identify who, what type, how and where this care should be provided. This novel perspective can help to legitimise a person's care needs and the support they require from wider care systems and contexts. DESIGN: Discussion paper outlines theory development. We adopted an inductive approach to theory development, drawing upon existing literature and the team's diverse experiences. Our theoretical insights were refined through a series of collaborative meetings to define the theory's constructs, until theoretical saturation was reached. DISCUSSION: Fourteen constructs are identified as essential to the theory. We propose it is possible, using these constructs, to generate caring life-course trajectories and predict divergences in these trajectories. The novel contribution of the theory is the interplay between understanding a person's care needs and provision within the context of their lifespan and personal histories, termed their care biography, and understanding a person's care needs and provision at specific points in time within a given care network and socio-political context. IMPACT FOR NURSING: The caring life-course theory can provide a roadmap to inform nursing and other care industry sectors, providing opportunities to integrate and deliver care from the perspective of the person and their care history, trajectories and networks, with those of professional care teams. It can help to shape health, social and economic policy and involve individuals, families and communities in more constructive ways of talking about the importance of care for improved quality of life and healthy societies.

How is vowel production in Italian affected by geminate consonants and stress patterns?

Italian vowels have a shorter duration before a geminate than before a singleton consonant, but a longer duration in syllables carrying stress. We asked whether children can produce the differentiation in vowel duration in singleton/geminate contexts reported for adults and whether their production changes depending on position of primary stress. Italian children (three-to-six-year-olds) and adults performed a nonword repetition. Each nonword appeared in four contexts, with the stressed/unstressed vowel preceding/following the singleton/geminate: /pa'paso/, /pap'paso/, 'papaso/, /'pappaso/. Acoustic analyses on the duration of the vowel preceding (V1) and following (V2) the medial consonant showed a type of consonant by age group interaction: the difference in vowel duration between children and adults was greater for geminate than singleton contexts, and was greater when the vowel carried stress. When V1 carried stress, its duration was shorter in the geminate than in the singleton in adults and older children, not in younger children.

A Sound Explanation for Motor Cortex Engagement during Action Word Comprehension.

Comprehending action words often engages similar brain regions to those involved in perceiving and executing actions. This finding has been interpreted as support for grounding of conceptual processing in motor representations or that conceptual processing involves motor simulation. However, such demonstrations cannot confirm the nature of the mechanism(s) responsible, as word comprehension involves multiple processes (e.g., lexical, semantic, morphological, phonological). In this study, we tested whether this motor cortex engagement instead reflects processing of statistical regularities in sublexical phonological features. Specifically, we measured brain activity in healthy participants using functional magnetic resonance imaging while they performed an auditory lexical decision paradigm involving monosyllabic action words associated with specific effectors (face, arm, and leg). We show that nonwords matched to the action words in terms of their phonotactic probability elicit common patterns of activation. In addition, we show that a measure of the action words' phonological typicality, the extent to which a word's phonology is typical of other words in the grammatical category to which it belongs (i.e., more or less verb-like), is responsible for their activating a significant portion of primary and premotor cortices. These results indicate motor cortex engagement during action word comprehension is more likely to reflect processing of statistical regularities in sublexical phonological features than conceptual processing. We discuss the implications for current neurobiological models of language, all of which implicitly or explicitly assume that the relationship between the sound of a word and its meaning is arbitrary.

Measuring children's auditory statistical learning via serial recall.

Statistical learning (SL) has been a prominent focus of research in developmental and adult populations, guided by the assumption that it is a fundamental component of learning underlying higher-order cognition. In developmental populations, however, there have been recent concerns regarding the degree to which many current tasks reliably measure SL, particularly in younger children. In the current article, we present the results of two studies that measured auditory statistical learning (ASL) of linguistic stimuli in children aged 5-8 years. Children listened to 6 min of continuous syllables comprising four trisyllabic pseudowords. Following the familiarization phase, children completed (a) a two-alternative forced-choice task and (b) a serial recall task in which they repeated either target sequences embedded during familiarization or foils, manipulated for sequence length. Results showed that, although both measures consistently revealed learning at the group level, the recall task better captured learning across the full range of abilities and was more reliable at the individual level. We conclude that, as has also been demonstrated in adults, the method holds promise for future studies of individual differences in ASL of linguistic stimuli.

Lexical stress contrastivity in Italian children with autism spectrum disorders: an exploratory acoustic study.

We investigated production of lexical stress in children with and without autism spectrum disorders (ASD), all monolingual Italian speakers. The mean age of the 16 autistic children was 5.73 years and the mean age of the 16 typically developing children was 4.65 years. Picture-naming targets were five trisyllabic words that began with a weak-strong pattern of lexical stress across the initial two syllables (WS: matita) and five trisyllabic words beginning with a strong-weak pattern (SW: gomito). Acoustic measures of the duration, fundamental frequency, and intensity of the first two vowels for correct word productions were used to calculate a normalised Pairwise Variability Index (PVI) for WS and SW words. Results of acoustic analyses indicated no statistically significant group differences in PVIs. Results should be interpreted in line with the exploratory nature of this study. We hope this study will encourage additional cross-linguistic studies of prosody in children's speech production.

An acoustic study of lexical stress contrastivity in children with and without autism spectrum disorders.

In this exploratory study, we examined stress contrastivity within real word productions elicited via picture naming in 20 children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and 20 typical peers group-wise matched on age and vocabulary. Targets had a dominant pattern of lexical stress beginning with a strong-weak pattern (SW: 'caterpillar', 'butterfly') or a non-dominant pattern of lexical stress beginning with a weak-strong pattern (WS: 'tomato', 'potato'). Children produced each target twice (n = 320 productions). Acoustic measures were made for the duration, fundamental frequency, and intensity of the first two vowels for each word production. For vowel duration and fundamental frequency, children with ASD and typical peers produced a similar magnitude of stress contrastivity for SW and WS words. However, there was a significant group difference in the way contrastivity in intensity was realised for WS words whereby children with ASD produced less stress contrastivity than typical peers. Bayesian analyses were in line with our interpretation of our frequentist analyses.

The relationship between children's sensitivity to dominant and non-dominant patterns of lexical stress and reading accuracy.

This study reports on a new task for assessing children's sensitivity to lexical stress for words with different stress patterns and demonstrates that this task is useful in examining predictors of reading accuracy during the elementary years. In English, polysyllabic words beginning with a strong syllable exhibit the most common or dominant pattern of lexical stress (e.g., "coconut"), whereas polysyllabic words beginning with a weak syllable exhibit a less common non-dominant pattern (e.g., "banana"). The new Aliens Talking Underwater task assesses children's ability to match low-pass filtered recordings of words to pictures of objects. Via filtering, phonetic detail is removed but prosodic contour information relating to lexical stress is retained. In a series of two-alternative forced choice trials, participants see a picture and are asked to choose which of two filtered recordings matches the name of that picture; one recording exhibits the correct lexical stress of the target word, and the other recording reverses the pattern of stress over the initial two syllables of the target word rendering it incorrect. Target words exhibit either dominant stress or non-dominant stress. Analysis of data collected from 192 typically developing children aged 5 to 12years revealed that sensitivity to non dominant lexical stress was a significant predictor of reading accuracy even when age and phonological awareness were taken into account. A total of 76.3% of variance in children's reading accuracy was explained by these variables.

Still not adult-like: lexical stress contrastivity in word productions of eight- to eleven-year-olds.

Lexical stress is the contrast between strong and weak syllables within words. Ballard et al. (2012) examined the amount of stress contrastivity across adjacent syllables in word productions of typically developing three- to seven-year-olds and adults. Here, eight- to eleven-year-olds are compared with the adults from Ballard et al. using acoustic measurements of relative contrast in duration, peak intensity, and peak fundamental frequency of the vowels within the initial two syllables of each word. While eight- to eleven-year-olds are closer to adult-like stress contrastivity than three- to seven-year-olds, they are not yet adult-like in terms of the intensity contrast for words beginning with a weak syllable.

Individual Differences in Statistical Learning Predict Children's Comprehension of Syntax.

Variability in children's language acquisition is likely due to a number of cognitive and social variables. The current study investigated whether individual differences in statistical learning (SL), which has been implicated in language acquisition, independently predicted 6- to 8-year-old's comprehension of syntax. Sixty-eight (N = 68) English-speaking children completed a test of comprehension of four syntactic structures, a test of SL utilizing nonlinguistic visual stimuli, and several additional control measures. The results revealed that SL independently predicted comprehension of two syntactic structures that show considerable variability in this age range: passives and object relative clauses. These data suggest that individual differences in children's capacity for SL are associated with the acquisition of the syntax of natural languages.

The role of elicited verbal imitation in toddlers' word learning.

This study is about the role of elicited verbal imitation in toddler word learning. Forty-eight toddlers were taught eight nonwords linked to referents. During training, they were asked to imitate the nonwords. Naming of the referents was tested at three intervals (one minute later [uncued], five minutes, and 1-7 days later [cued]) and recognition at the last two intervals. Receptive vocabulary, nonword repetition, and expressive phonology were assessed. The accuracy of elicited imitation during training predicted naming at one and five minutes, but not 1-7 days later. Neither nonword repetition nor expressive phonology was associated with naming over time but extant vocabulary predicted performance at all time intervals. We hypothesize that elicited imitation facilitates word learning in its earliest stages by supporting encoding of the word form into memory and allowing practice of the articulatory-phonological plan. At later stages, vocabulary facilitates integration of the word form into the lexical network.

Acoustic changes in the production of lexical stress during Lombard speech.

The Lombard effect describes the phenomenon of individuals increasing their vocal intensity when speaking in the presence of background noise. Here, we conducted an investigation of the production of lexical stress during Lombard speech. Participants (N = 27) produced the same sentences in three conditions: one quiet condition and two noise conditions at 70 dB (white noise; multi-talker babble). Manual acoustic analyses (syllable duration, vowel intensity, and vowel fundamental frequency) were completed for repeated productions of two trisyllabic words with opposing patterns of lexical stress (weak-strong; strong-weak) in each of the three conditions. In total, 324 productions were analysed (12 utterances per participant). Results revealed that, rather than increasing vocal intensity equally across syllables, participants alter the degree of stress contrastivity when speaking in noise. This was especially evident in the production of strong-weak lexical stress where there was an increase in contrastivity across syllables in terms of intensity and fundamental frequency. This preliminary study paves the way for further research that is needed to establish these findings using a larger set of multisyllabic stimuli.

Self-Harm Among 17-Year-Old Adolescents With/Without Disabilities in the United Kingdom.

Background: Self-harm is a critical public health issue for adolescents/young adults. Aims: To estimate the prevalence of self-harm among adolescents with/without disabilities in the United Kingdom. Method: Secondary analysis of data collected at age 17 in the UK's Millennium Cohort Study. Results: Prevalence of self-harm was significantly greater among adolescents with disabilities for suicide attempts and six forms of self-harming behaviors. The lifetime prevalence of suicide attempts was 5.3% (4.5-6.3) among adolescents without disabilities, 21.9% (18.2-26.2) among adolescents with less limiting disabilities, and 25.5% (17.2-35.9) among adolescents with more limiting disabilities. Adjusted prevalence rate ratios ranged from 5.13 (3.58-7.36) for those with mental health limitations to 1.48 (0.65-3.35) for those with mobility limitations. Similar patterns were observed for the 12-month prevalence of six self-harming behaviors. Limitations: Further studies are needed to identify potential mediators of the association between disability and self-harm that are potentially modifiable. Conclusion: Adolescents with disabilities are at markedly greater probability of suicide attempts and self-harming behaviors than their peers.

Non-arbitrary mappings between size and sound of English words: Form typicality effects during lexical access and memory.

A century of research has provided evidence of limited size sound symbolism in English, that is, certain vowels are non-arbitrarily associated with words denoting small versus large referents (e.g., /i/ as in teensy and /ɑ/ as in tall). In the present study, we investigated more extensive statistical regularities between surface form properties of English words and ratings of their semantic size, that is, form typicality, and its impact on language and memory processing. Our findings provide the first evidence of significant word form typicality for semantic size. In five empirical studies using behavioural megastudy data sets of performance on written and auditory lexical decision, reading aloud, semantic decision, and recognition memory tasks, we show that form typicality for size is a stronger and more consistent predictor of lexical access during word comprehension and production than semantic size, in addition to playing a significant role in verbal memory. The empirical results demonstrate that statistical information about non-arbitrary form-size mappings is accessed automatically during language and verbal memory processing, unlike semantic size that is largely dependent on task contexts that explicitly require participants to access size knowledge. We discuss how a priori knowledge about non-arbitrary form-meaning associations in the lexicon might be incorporated in models of language processing that implement Bayesian statistical inference.

Statistical relationships between surface form and sensory meanings of English words influence lexical processing.

Across spoken languages, there are some words whose acoustic features resemble the meanings of their referents by evoking perceptual imagery, i.e., they are iconic (e.g., in English, "splash" imitates the sound of an object hitting water). While these sound symbolic form-meaning relationships are well-studied, relatively little work has explored whether the sensory properties of English words also involve systematic (i.e., statistical) form-meaning mappings. We first test the prediction that surface form properties can predict sensory experience ratings for over 5,000 monosyllabic and disyllabic words (Juhasz & Yap, 2013), confirming they explain a significant proportion of variance. Next, we show that iconicity and sensory form typicality, a statistical measure of how well a word's form aligns with its sensory experience rating, are only weakly related to each other, indicating they are likely to be distinct constructs. To determine whether form typicality influences processing of sensory words, we conducted regression analyses using lexical decision, word recognition, naming and semantic decision tasks from behavioral megastudy data sets. Across the data sets, sensory form typicality was able to predict more variance in performance than sensory experience or iconicity ratings. Further, the effects of typicality were consistently inhibitory in comprehension (i.e., more typical forms were responded to more slowly and less accurately), whereas for production the effect was facilitatory. These findings are the first evidence that systematic form-meaning mappings in English sensory words influence their processing. We discuss how language processing models incorporating Bayesian prediction mechanisms might be able to account for form typicality in the lexicon. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Putting an "end" to the motor cortex representations of action words.

Language processing is an example of implicit learning of multiple statistical cues that provide probabilistic information regarding word structure and use. Much of the current debate about language embodiment is devoted to how action words are represented in the brain, with motor cortex activity evoked by these words assumed to selectively reflect conceptual content and/or its simulation. We investigated whether motor cortex activity evoked by manual action words (e.g., caress) might reflect sensitivity to probabilistic orthographic-phonological cues to grammatical category embedded within individual words. We first review neuroimaging data demonstrating that nonwords evoke activity much more reliably than action words along the entire motor strip, encompassing regions proposed to be action category specific. Using fMRI, we found that disyllabic words denoting manual actions evoked increased motor cortex activity compared with non-body-part-related words (e.g., canyon), activity which overlaps that evoked by observing and executing hand movements. This result is typically interpreted in support of language embodiment. Crucially, we also found that disyllabic nonwords containing endings with probabilistic cues predictive of verb status (e.g., -eve) evoked increased activity compared with nonwords with endings predictive of noun status (e.g., -age) in the identical motor area. Thus, motor cortex responses to action words cannot be assumed to selectively reflect conceptual content and/or its simulation. Our results clearly demonstrate motor cortex activity reflects implicit processing of ortho-phonological statistical regularities that help to distinguish a word's grammatical class.

A meta-analysis on the correlations between statistical learning, language, and reading outcomes.

The purpose of this meta-analytic review is to investigate the relation between statistical learning (SL) and language-related outcomes, and between SL and reading-related outcomes. A comprehensive search of peer-reviewed published research resulted in 42 articles with 53 independent samples and 201 reported effect sizes (Pearson's r). Results of our robust variance estimation correlated effects model revealed a significant, moderate relation between SL and language-related outcomes, r = .236, p < .001, and a significant, moderate relation between SL and reading-related outcomes, r = .239, p < .001. Moreover, age, the writing system of the language, and SL paradigm moderate the strength of the association between SL and reading. Age is the only significant moderator on the strength of the association between SL and language. The findings from this meta-analysis shed light on the contribution of multiple factors that impact how SL relates to language and reading outcomes, with important implications for developing effective instructional practices that emphasize statistical regularities of oral and written materials in the classroom. Theoretical implications of these findings for language and reading development are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

ABRACADABRA literacy instruction for children with Down syndrome via telepractice during COVID-19: A pilot study.

BACKGROUND: COVID-19 has resulted in some educators and allied health practitioners transitioning to online delivery of literacy instruction. As far as we are aware, no studies have investigated online delivery of comprehensive literacy instruction for children with Down syndrome. AIMS: In this pilot study, we explore the efficacy of online delivery of ABRACADABRA (a free literacy web application) for children with Down syndrome, alongside supplementary parent-led shared book reading, during the COVID-19 pandemic. SAMPLE: Six children with Down syndrome, aged 8-12 years, participated in this within-participants design study. METHODS: Participants acted as their own controls with outcome variables measured at three timepoints: baseline, pre-instruction and post-instruction. Children participated in 16-18 hrs of one-to-one literacy instruction online over a 6-week instruction phase, along with twice weekly parent-led shared book reading activities. RESULTS: Outcomes from standardized assessments revealed statistically significant improvements in word- and passage-level reading accuracy skills over the instruction phase (pre-instruction to post-instruction) compared with the no-instruction control phase (baseline to pre-instruction). Improvements in reading comprehension skills were inconsistent across assessment measures and statistical analyses. CONCLUSION: Children with Down syndrome can benefit from comprehensive literacy instruction delivered via telepractice. Our study provides critical initial evidence of successful service delivery during a global pandemic and beyond.

Exploring the Effects of Literacy Instruction for Children With Cerebral Palsy: A Systematic Review.

PURPOSE: Some children with cerebral palsy (CP) have difficulty acquiring conventional reading and writing skills. This systematic review explores the different types of literacy instruction and their effects on the reading and writing skills of children with CP. METHOD: Relevant studies published between 2000 and 2020 were identified using electronic databases and terms related to CP and literacy. Data on participant characteristics, instruction characteristics, and instruction outcomes were extracted. A standardized measure of effect size was used to quantify reported treatment effects. RESULTS: The systematic search identified 2,970 potentially relevant studies, of which 24 met inclusion criteria. These studies included 66 children with CP aged 5-18 years. One of the included studies utilized a group research design, whereas the remaining used single-subject designs. Studies investigated literacy instruction methods designed to teach phonics, sight-word recognition, reading fluency, reading comprehension, spelling, or written expression skills, or multicomponent instruction (instruction methods encompassing three or more of these skills). Most instruction methods were associated with gains in reading and writing skills with medium to large effects; however, our analysis of methodological rigor suggests that these findings need to be interpreted with caution. CONCLUSIONS: We propose that literacy instruction utilizing evidence-based principles can be effective for children with CP, provided instruction is accessible and allows children to demonstrate and receive feedback on their skills; however, further research is greatly needed. Clinical implications and priorities for future research are discussed. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.21357558.