Thinking Ahead: Incremental Language Processing is Associated with Receptive Language Abilities in Preschoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Courtney E Venker, Jan Edwards, Jenny R Saffran and 1 others
PMID 30390172WHAT IT FOUND
Preschoolers with autism who had stronger receptive language looked to the named picture earlier when a verb hinted what noun was coming.
The link was twice as strong when the verb gave a clue than when it did not.
Key findings
01Children looked more at the target when the verb hinted at the upcoming noun than when the verb was neutral: 68% versus 60%.
02Receptive language was associated with more looking to the target, and this association was twice as strong when the verb hinted at the upcoming noun.
03Children with stronger receptive language showed a larger head start in looking to the target when the verb hinted at the upcoming noun.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Only 20 children returned for the follow-up visit, and 3 did not complete the receptive language assessment, leaving 17 children in the main language analysis. The study had no comparison group of children without autism, so it describes differences within this small autism group only. The results are correlational, so the study cannot show whether stronger receptive language causes better prediction or whether prediction supports language growth. The task used two pictures and short spoken phrases, so it may not show how children predict words during everyday conversation. Eighteen children were receiving speech-language pathology services, and 14 were receiving intensive autism services; the paper does not report whether these services affected the task.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest. The supplied text does not state who funded the study.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as evidence that a therapy using verb clues will improve language. The study measured an association in 20 preschoolers, with 17 included in the language analysis, and it did not test an intervention.