A Path Model of Expressive Vocabulary Skills in Initially Preverbal Preschool Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Jena McDaniel, Paul Yoder, Linda R Watson
PMID 28251393WHAT IT FOUND
In preverbal preschool children with ASD, intentional communication, diversity of key consonants, and parent responses to the child's focus predicted later expressive vocabulary.
Receptive vocabulary did not explain these links.
Key findings
01Indirect paths from the early predictors to later expressive vocabulary through mid-point receptive vocabulary were not significant.
02Intentional communication, diversity of key consonants used in communication, and parent linguistic responses had significant direct associations with later expressive vocabulary after controlling for mid-point receptive vocabulary.
03Diversity of key consonants used in communication partly accounted for the association between intentional communication and later expressive vocabulary.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
This was a correlational path model, not a treatment study, so it cannot show that any variable caused expressive vocabulary growth. The sample of 87 children was large for preverbal children with ASD but still small for a model with many predicted paths. The results were not cross-validated on another sample, so they could be specific to these children. The model used single time points rather than growth rates, which may have weakened some associations. Receptive vocabulary is hard to measure in young children with ASD, and both parent report and direct observation have weaknesses. Responding to joint attention was measured with few opportunities, so the null finding for it may reflect weak measurement. Some data were missing and imputed, with missingness ranging from 0 to 12.64%.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflict of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that targeting intentional communication, diversity of key consonants, or parent responses will improve expressive vocabulary. This was a correlational path model, so it cannot rule out other explanations or prove cause.