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The valid assessment of vocabulary development in dual-language-learning infants is critical to developmental science. We developed the Dual Language Learners English-Spanish (DLL-ES) Inventories to measure vocabularies of U.S. English-Spanish DLLs. The inventories provide translation equivalents for all Spanish and English items on Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) short forms; extended inventories based on CDI long forms; and Spanish language-variety options. Item-Response Theory analyses applied to Wordbank and Web-CDI data (n = 2603, 12-18 months; n = 6722, 16-36 months; half female; 1% Asian, 3% Black, 2% Hispanic, 30% White, 64% unknown) showed near-perfect associations between DLL-ES and CDI long-form scores. Interviews with 10 Hispanic mothers of 18- to 24-month-olds (2 White, 1 Black, 7 multi-racial; 6 female) provide a proof of concept for the value of the DLL-ES for assessing the vocabularies of DLLs.
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Citrus sinensis , Malus , Multilinguismo , Criança , Lactente , Humanos , Feminino , Vocabulário , Linguagem Infantil , Testes de Linguagem , IdiomaRESUMO
Children's exposure to talk about conceptual categories plays a powerful role in shaping their conceptual development. However, it remains unclear when parents begin to talk about categories with young children and whether such talk relates to children's language skills. This study examines relations between parents' talk about conceptual categories and infants' expressive language development. Forty-seven parent-infant dyads were videotaped playing together at child age 10, 12, 14, and 16 months. Transcripts of interactions were analyzed to identify parents' talk about conceptual categories. Children's expressive language development was assessed at 18 months. Findings indicate that parents indeed talked about conceptual categories with infants and that talk was stable across time, with college-educated parents producing more than non-college-educated parents. Further, parents' talk about conceptual categories between 10 and 16 months predicted children's 18-month expressive language. This study sheds new light on mechanisms through which early experiences may support children's language development.
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Desenvolvimento da Linguagem , Idioma , Criança , Humanos , Lactente , Pré-Escolar , Pais , Aptidão , Formação de Conceito , Relações Pais-FilhoRESUMO
Categorical induction abilities are robust in typically developing (TD) preschoolers, while children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) frequently perform inconsistently on tasks asking for the transference of traits from a known category member to a new example based on shared category membership. Here, TD five-year-olds and six-year-olds with ASD participated in a categorical induction task; the TD children performed significantly better and more consistently than the children with ASD. Concurrent verbal and nonverbal tests were not significant correlates; however, the TD children's shape bias performance at two years of age was significantly positively predictive of categorical induction performance at age five. The shape bias, the tendency to extend a novel label to other objects of the same shape during word learning, appears linked with categorical induction ability in TD children, suggesting a common underlying skill and consistent developmental trajectory. Word learning and categorical induction appear uncoupled in children with ASD.
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Transtorno do Espectro Autista , Criança , Humanos , Aprendizagem VerbalRESUMO
AIMS: Postural variability is central to children's locomotion, motor control, and environmental exploration, and lacks standardized methods for systematic assessment. The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate the feasibility and interrater reliability of Child Posture Variability Coding (CPVC), a method of quantifying postural variability in young children. METHOD: Videos of parent-child play interactions obtained from a longitudinal study investigating language acquisition in typically developing (TD) children and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were used to develop 33 codes for children's voluntary changes in static and dynamic postures. Interrater reliability was calculated for three raters who independently coded 10 randomly selected videos of children aged 23 to 48 months (TD: n = 5, median = 35, IQR = 12.5; ASD: n = 5, median = 35, IQR = 6.75). RESULTS: Overall, CPVC demonstrated excellent interrater reliability (Krippendorff's α > 0.90). Among all codes developed, five codes (i.e., sit-half, sit-other, crawl, cruise, and supported walk) were not observed by any coders in the sample, but were kept in the coding scheme to reflect normal developmental milestones. CONCLUSIONS: CPVC is a reliable, feasible method of quantifying postural variability in young children with and without neurodevelopmental disorders in naturalistic contexts.
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Transtorno do Espectro Autista , Pré-Escolar , Estudos de Viabilidade , Humanos , Estudos Longitudinais , Postura , Reprodutibilidade dos TestesRESUMO
Studies investigating the development of tense/aspect in children with developmental disorders have focused on production frequency and/or relied on short spontaneous speech samples. How children with developmental disorders use future forms/constructions is also unknown. The current study expands this literature by examining frequency, consistency, and productivity of past, present, and future usage, using the Speechome Recorder, which enables collection of dense, longitudinal audio-video recordings of children's speech. Samples were collected longitudinally in a child who was previously diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, but at the time of the study exhibited only language delay [Audrey], and a typically developing child [Cleo]. While Audrey was comparable to Cleo in frequency and productivity of tense/aspect use, she was atypical in her consistency and production of an unattested future form. Examining additional measures of densely collected speech samples may reveal subtle atypicalities that are missed when relying on only few typical measures of acquisition.
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Transtornos do Desenvolvimento da Linguagem/diagnóstico , Semântica , Meio Social , Gravação em Vídeo , Transtorno do Espectro Autista/diagnóstico , Pré-Escolar , Comorbidade , Deficiências do Desenvolvimento/diagnóstico , Feminino , Humanos , Linguística , Estudos Longitudinais , Valores de Referência , Medida da Produção da Fala , VocabulárioRESUMO
Social deficits have been implicated in the language delays and deficits of children with autism (ASD); thus, the extent to which these children use language input in social contexts similarly to typically developing (TD) children is unknown. The current study investigated how caregiver input influenced the development of wh-question comprehension in TD children and language-matched preschoolers with ASD. Children were visited at four-month intervals over 1.5 years; mother-child play sessions at visits 1-2 were coded for maternal wh-question use. At visits 3-5 children watched videos in the Intermodal Preferential Looking paradigm, to assess their comprehension of subject and object wh-questions. Mothers' use of wh-questions with verbs and complex wh-questions positively predicted wh-question comprehension in the TD group; in contrast, mothers' use of wh-questions with 'be' as the main verb negatively predicted wh-question comprehension in the ASD group. Thus, TD children and children with ASD appear to use their linguistic input differently.
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Transtorno Autístico/psicologia , Linguagem Infantil , Relações Mãe-Filho , Comportamento Verbal , Adulto , Pré-Escolar , Compreensão , Feminino , Humanos , Linguística , Masculino , MãesRESUMO
BACKGROUND: Although autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are generally considered lifelong disabilities, literature suggests that a minority of individuals with an ASD will lose the diagnosis. However, the existence of this phenomenon, as well as its frequency and interpretation, is still controversial: were they misdiagnosed initially, is this a rare event, did they lose the full diagnosis, but still suffer significant social and communication impairments or did they lose all symptoms of ASD and function socially within the normal range? METHODS: The present study documents a group of these optimal outcome individuals (OO group, n=34) by comparing their functioning on standardized measures to age, sex, and nonverbal IQ matched individuals with high-functioning autism (HFA group, n=44) or typical development (TD group, n=34). For this study, 'optimal outcome' requires losing all symptoms of ASD in addition to the diagnosis, and functioning within the nonautistic range of social interaction and communication. Domains explored include language, face recognition, socialization, communication, and autism symptoms. RESULTS: Optimal outcome and TD groups' mean scores did not differ on socialization, communication, face recognition, or most language subscales, although three OO individuals showed below-average scores on face recognition. Early in their development, the OO group displayed milder symptoms than the HFA group in the social domain, but had equally severe difficulties with communication and repetitive behaviors. CONCLUSIONS: Although possible deficits in more subtle aspects of social interaction or cognition are not ruled out, the results substantiate the possibility of OO from autism spectrum disorders and demonstrate an overall level of functioning within normal limits for this group.
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Transtorno Autístico/psicologia , Adolescente , Fatores Etários , Criança , Feminino , Humanos , Entrevista Psicológica , Masculino , Escalas de Graduação Psiquiátrica , Testes Psicológicos , Remissão Espontânea , Fatores Sexuais , Inquéritos e Questionários , Escalas de Wechsler , Adulto JovemRESUMO
The social deficits associated with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have been implicated in the language delays and deficits of children with ASD. Consequently, the extent to which children with ASD utilize their language-related interactions and input in the same ways as typically developing children is only just beginning to be investigated. The current article summarizes the role of input for typically developing children learning language, and then reviews in some detail recent studies demonstrating influential effects of maternal responsivity (e.g., following in on children's focus of attention) and aspects of maternal speech (e.g., word frequency, word diversity, structural complexity) on the language production and comprehension of young children with ASD. Maternal responsivity appears to play a particularly influential role with children who are minimally verbal whereas the content and structure of maternal speech facilitate language in children who are already verbal.
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Transtorno Autístico/fisiopatologia , Linguagem Infantil , Transtornos do Desenvolvimento da Linguagem/fisiopatologia , Desenvolvimento da Linguagem , Animais , Transtorno Autístico/psicologia , Criança , Educação Continuada , Humanos , Transtornos do Desenvolvimento da Linguagem/psicologia , Relações Mãe-Filho , Comportamento SocialRESUMO
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.
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Transtorno do Espectro Autista , Masculino , Humanos , Criança , Transtorno do Espectro Autista/diagnóstico , Estudos Longitudinais , IdiomaRESUMO
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.
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Transtorno Autístico , Cuidadores , Humanos , Criança , Processamento de Linguagem Natural , Desenvolvimento da Linguagem , LinguísticaRESUMO
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.
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Transtorno Autístico , Humanos , Transtorno Autístico/diagnóstico , Ecolalia/diagnóstico , Cuidadores , Fala , Desenvolvimento da LinguagemRESUMO
Background: Pragmatic language weaknesses, a core feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), are implicated in externalizing behavior disorders (Gremillion & Martel, 2014). Particularly in a clinical setting, these co-occurring externalizing disorders are very common in autism; rates of Attentional Deficit-Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) are as high as 83% (ADHD) and 73% (ODD; Joshi et al., 2010). It is possible that pragmatic language weaknesses impact the ability to effectively communicate one's needs, which may lead autistic children to utilize externalizing behaviors in order to achieve a desired outcome (Ketelaars et al., 2010; Rodas et al., 2017). Methods: The aim of the current study is to investigate the relationship between pragmatic language, assessed via multiple modalities, and externalizing behaviors, assessed by parent interview, in youth with autistic (n=33) or neurotypical (NT; n=34) developmental histories, along with youth diagnosed with autism, who lost the diagnosis (LAD) by adolescence (n=31). Results: The autism group had significantly more pragmatic language difficulties, and more externalizing behaviors and disorders; ADHD symptoms were particularly more prevalent, while LAD and NT groups did not differ. Challenges in pragmatic language abilities were associated with more externalizing symptoms when controlling for other facts that typically influence such symptoms, including nonverbal cognition, structural language, executive functioning, and autistic characteristics, but did not remain when age was included in the model. Conclusions: We discuss the mechanisms underlying difficult-to-manage externalizing behaviors and implications for interventions and long-term outcomes for youth with and without a history of autism.
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Previous research has demonstrated that visual properties of objects can affect shape-based categorization in a novel-name extension task; however, we still do not know how a relationship between visual properties of objects affects judgments in a novel-name extension task. We examined effects of increased visual similarity among the target and test objects in a shape bias task in young children and adults. Experiment 1 assessed college students with sets of objects whose similarity between target and test objects was either low or high similarity. Adults preferred shape when the similarity among objects was minimized. Experiment 2 tested 24- month-olds in their use of the shape bias using the Intermodal Preferential Looking Paradigm. Children showed a shape bias only with items whose similarity to each other was low. These findings suggest that the visual properties of objects affect shape bias performance.
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Previous research has found that children who are acquiring argument-drop languages such as Turkish and Chinese make use of syntactic frames to extend familiar verb meanings (Göksun, Küntay & Naigles, 2008; Lee & Naigles, 2008). This article investigates whether two-year-olds learning Japanese, another argument-drop language, make use of argument number and case markings in learning novel verbs. Children watched videos of novel causative and non-causative actions via Intermodal Preferential Looking. The novel verbs were presented in transitive or intransitive frames; the NPs in the transitive frames appeared 'bare' or with case markers. Consistent with previous findings of Morphosyntactic Bootstrapping, children who heard the novel verbs in the transitive frame with case markers reliably assigned those verbs to the novel causative actions.
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Linguagem Infantil , Semântica , Pré-Escolar , Compreensão , Feminino , Humanos , Japão , Aprendizagem , Linguística , MasculinoRESUMO
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.
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Background: Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate social and communication impairments from an early age. While researchers have long investigated parenting behaviors in relation to children's social and communication development, fewer studies have examined the relevance of movement-based parenting behaviors to facilitating communication and social engagement with young children. The present study aimed to investigate: (1) parent-guided movements (PGMs) within dyads of parents and typically developing (TD) children and children with ASD; and (2) children's ASD diagnostic and receptive language scores as predictors of PGM frequency. Method: Video-recorded play interactions of 33 TD dyads (mean age: 20.4 months) and 31 dyads with ASD (mean age: 32.6 months) were matched on child's expressive language. Data were obtained from a longitudinal study on developmental language trajectories in ASD and coded for PGMs. Results: Overall, parents of children with ASD initiated PGMs more frequently than parents of TD children during play (U = 269.00, z = - 3.58, p < 0.001). PGM frequency was predicted by children's ADOS scores (X 2 = 5.46, p = 0.02, OR = 1.26, 95% CI [1.04, 1.54]) and receptive language (X 2 = 4.15, p = 0.04, OR = 5.43, 95% CI [1.10, 27.67]). Conclusions: Findings suggest that parents of children with ASD and low receptive language may utilize more movement-based strategies to compensate for their children's impaired social engagement and verbal comprehension. This study offers insight on a particular movement-based modality characterizing ASD dyads that can be used as a measure in parent-mediated interventions.
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Many studies have utilized standardized measures and storybook narratives to characterize language profiles of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). They report that structural language of these children is on par with mental-age-matched typically developing (TD) peers. Few studies have looked at structural language profiles in conversational contexts. This study examines conversational speech produced in a virtual reality (VR) paradigm to investigate the strengths and weaknesses of structural language abilities of these children. The VR paradigm introduced varying social and cognitive demands across phases. Our results indicate that children from these diagnostic groups produced less complex structural language than TD children. Moreover, language complexity decreased in all groups across phases, suggesting a cross-etiology sensitivity to conversational contexts.
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Transtorno do Deficit de Atenção com Hiperatividade , Transtorno do Espectro Autista , Realidade Virtual , Transtorno do Deficit de Atenção com Hiperatividade/psicologia , Transtorno do Espectro Autista/psicologia , Criança , Comorbidade , Humanos , IdiomaRESUMO
The current research study characterized syntactic productivity across a range of 5-year-old children with autism and explored the degree to which this productivity was associated with standardized measures of language and autism symptomatology. Natural language samples were transcribed from play-based interactions between a clinician and participants with an autism diagnosis. Speech samples were parsed for grammatical morphemes and were used to generate measures of MLU and total number of utterances. We applied categorical recurrence quantification analysis, a technique used to quantify patterns of repetition in behaviors, to the children's noun-related and verb-related speech. Recurrence metrics captured the degree to which children repeated specific lexical/grammatical units (i.e., recurrence rate) and the degree to which children repeated combinations of lexical/grammatical units (i.e., percent determinism). Findings indicated that beyond capturing patterns shown in traditional linguistic analysis, recurrence can reveal differences in the speech productions of children with autism spectrum disorder at the lexical and grammatical levels. We also found that the degree of repeating noun-related units and grammatical units was related to MLU and ADOS Severity Score, while the degree of repeating unit combinations (e.g., saying "the big fluffy dog" or the determiner-adjective-adjective-noun construction multiple times), in general, was only related to MLU.
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Objective: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in very young children with significant cognitive impairment is difficult to diagnose, depriving them of the earliest opportunities for autism-specific intervention. This study delineated specific symptoms in this group, compared to symptoms in children with Global Developmental Delay (GDD) and in ASD with milder developmental delays.Method: Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, 2nd Edition, Toddler Module revealed symptoms in three groups of toddlers, with mean ages of 17-20 months: (1) ASD and cognitive/language functioning below the 12-month level (ASD-MA < 12 mos; n = 28), (2) GDD (n = 27), and (3) ASD and cognitive/language functioning at or above the 12-month level (ASD-MA ≥ 12 mos; n = 29). Logistic regression models were fit to control for developmental level. Results: Items in all domains (social interaction, communication, repetitive movements) discriminated ASD-MA < 12 mos from GDD. The two ASD groups, matched for age but differing on developmental level, showed strikingly similar ASD symptomatology. Conclusion: ADOS-2 symptoms differentiated ASD-MA < 12 mos from GDD, after controlling for cognitive impairment. Symptoms in the two ASD groups were minimally related to developmental level. The ADOS-2 Toddler Module successfully captured ASD symptomatology even in children whose developmental level was below the recommended ADOS-2 cutoff of 12 months, which may increase their access to early ASD-specific intervention.
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Transtorno do Espectro Autista , Transtorno do Espectro Autista/complicações , Transtorno do Espectro Autista/diagnóstico , Transtorno do Espectro Autista/psicologia , Pré-Escolar , Cognição , Humanos , Lactente , Inteligência , Modelos Logísticos , Testes NeuropsicológicosRESUMO
Two-, three- and four-year-old English learners enacted sentences that were missing a direct object (e.g. *The zebra brings.). Previous work has indicated that preschoolers faced with such ungrammatical sentences consistently alter the usual meaning of the verb to fit the syntactic frame (enacting 'zebra comes'); older children are more likely to repair the syntax to fit the meaning of the verb (enacting 'zebra brings something'; Naigles, Gleitman & Gleitman, 1993). We investigated whether young children performed more repairs if an informative context preceded the ungrammatical sentences. Test sentences were preceded by short vignettes that created a relationship between three characters. Children repaired more sentences than had been found previously; however, older preschoolers also repaired significantly more frequently than younger preschoolers. Discourse context thus seems relevant to the acquisition of verb argument structure, but is not the sole source of information.