Child and family characteristics associated with verbal communication difficulties in adolescents with autism and other developmental disabilities.
Patrick S Powell, Maria G Gonzalez, Karen Pazol and 3 others
PMID 39566369WHAT IT FOUND
Adolescents with autism had verbal communication difficulty more often than adolescents with other developmental disabilities (47.4% vs 14.6%).
Lower early expressive language was associated with later difficulty. Maternal education, race, insurance, and sex showed mixed links.
Key findings
01Adolescents with autism spectrum disorder were more likely than adolescents with other developmental disabilities to have some degree of verbal communication difficulty (47.4% vs 14.6%).
02Lower early childhood expressive language age-equivalent scores were associated with higher likelihood of verbal communication difficulty in adolescence in the combined sample and within autism and other developmental disability groups.
03Among adolescents with early expressive language delay, 49.8% had no reported verbal communication difficulty in adolescence, and 55% of those with persistent difficulty had only a little trouble.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Verbal communication difficulty was based on mother report, not standardized speech and language assessment, so classification may be imperfect. The follow-up sample included a higher proportion of non-Hispanic White mothers (71% vs 57%), mothers with college or advanced degrees (70% vs 49%), and families with household incomes more than 400% above the federal poverty level (41% vs 33%) compared with those who did not participate. The other developmental disability group was heterogeneous and included speech-language delay (57.3%), developmental delay (34.8%), sensory integration disorder (13.9%), and motor delay (13.6%), so results may not apply to all children with developmental disabilities. The study is observational, so it cannot show that any factor caused later verbal communication difficulty. It did not examine the type or number of services received, which may influence language outcomes.
The easy way to misread this
Do not tell families that early expressive language delay means the adolescent will still have communication difficulty. Among adolescents with early delay, 49.8% had no reported difficulty in adolescence.