Attempting to "Increase Intake from the Input": Attention and Word Learning in Children with Autism.
Elena J Tenenbaum, Dima Amso, Giulia Righi and 1 others
PMID 28342164WHAT IT FOUND
Pointing to the mouth did not help children learn a new word in the first experiment.
Children with autism looked more at the target when the object was held next to the mouth in the second experiment.
Key findings
01Pointing to the mouth while labeling shifted attention away from the target object, and neither group looked reliably more at the target after hearing the label.
02When the speaker held the object next to her mouth while labeling it, children with autism looked more at the target object after hearing the label than they had looked at it before.
03Typically developing children looked reliably more at the target object after hearing the label when the object was held next to the mouth or covered the mouth.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study used a short laboratory eye-tracking task, and the outcome was looking time to a target object after hearing a label, not spoken or functional language. In Experiment 1, neither group reliably looked more at the target after familiarization in either condition. The pointing cue did not produce a clear increase in mouth looking; it only showed a marginal trend, and it significantly decreased attention to the target object. In Experiment 2, the main analysis found no significant overall effect of condition or group, so the near-mouth result came from group-specific comparisons. The children with autism looked less at the stimuli overall than the typically developing children in the two experiments. The Cover condition made the object and mouth overlap, so looks at the object were also counted as looks at the mouth. The autism groups were not minimally verbal: Experiment 2 required single-word production, and children with language scores at 12 months or below were excluded. The mean ages differed: Experiment 1, autism 47.09 months and typically developing 19.95 months; Experiment 2, autism 69.76 months and typically developing 30.93 months.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat this as proof that holding an object near the mouth will improve everyday word learning. The study measured looking time to a novel object in a short laboratory task, and in Experiment 1 neither group reliably learned the label.