Social Communication and Parent Verbal Responsiveness Across Interaction Contexts in Toddlers on the Autism Spectrum.
Abigail Delehanty, Ciera M Lorio, Mollie Romano and 3 others
PMID 38407116WHAT IT FOUND
Toddlers communicated most during book sharing and play with people.
Parents followed in with verbal comments during these activities, but used more directives during chores and transitions. Communication occurred in all contexts, supporting the use of everyday routines for intervention.
Key findings
01Children communicated at significantly higher rates per minute during book sharing and play with people compared to all other interaction contexts.
02Parents used proportionally more follow-in verbal comments during book sharing and play, whereas they used more follow-in directives during necessary activities like chores and transitions.
03Over half of child communicative acts during caregiving, chores, meals, and transitions were for behavior regulation (requesting or protesting).
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study is correlational and cannot determine if specific contexts cause changes in communication or if families select contexts based on child abilities. Families chose which activities to perform, leading to unequal sample sizes across contexts and potentially biased observations toward preferred activities like toy play. Information about prior intervention services or parent training in responsiveness was not available, so these factors may have influenced the observed communication patterns.
Declared interests
Funding was provided by various NIH institutes (NICHD, NIDCD, NIMH) and the CDC. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that the higher communication rates in book sharing and play with people mean these contexts are universally superior for all children. The study found that the pattern of communication across contexts was similar for autistic and typically developing toddlers, but the absolute rates differed, and parents' responses varied by context type.