Naturalistic language sampling to characterize the language abilities of 3-year-olds with autism spectrum disorder.
Elizabeth C Bacon, Suzanna Osuna, Eric Courchesne and 1 others
PMID 29754501WHAT IT FOUND
Only 3.7% of 3-year-olds with autism used no words in parent play, but 34% used fewer than 20 words.
In autism, more word use and initiations were linked to better social scores.
Key findings
01Only 3.7% of toddlers with ASD used zero words during the parent-child language sample.
0234% of toddlers with ASD used fewer than 20 word tokens, and 17% used fewer than five word types.
03For toddlers with ASD, more full word use and more child initiations were associated with higher socialization scores and lower ADOS total scores.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The language delay group included children whose delay had resolved by age three. That group is not a clean comparison for persistent language delay. Most toddlers had already been referred and evaluated before age three. All children were referred for treatment once a delay was identified. The standardized language and adaptive measures were used to help make the diagnoses. Group differences on those measures are partly circular. The study measured language at age three. It did not test an intervention. The correlations between language and social behaviour were largely driven by diagnostic group status. They do not show a simple within-child relationship for all groups.
Declared interests
The supplied metadata lists NIH extramural research support. The article text does not give a further conflicts of interest or funding declaration.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the low nonverbal rate as evidence that language deficits are mild. A substantial minority used very few words, and the autism group showed clear group differences in language measures.