The relationship between race and comorbid symptoms in infants and toddlers with autism spectrum disorder

AbstractStatistical learning refers to the ability to extract the statistical relations embedded in a sequence, and it plays a crucial role in the development of communicative and social skills that are impacted in the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Here, we investigated the relationship between infants’ SL ability and autistic traits in their parents. Using a visual habituation task, we tested infant offspring of adults (non-diagnosed) who show high (HAT infants) versus low (LAT infants) autistic traits. Results demonstrated that LAT infants learned the statistical structure embedded in a visual sequence, while HAT infants failed. Moreover, infants’ SL ability was related to autistic traits in their parents, further suggesting that early dysfunctions in SL might contribute to variabilities in ASD symptoms.

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Exploring Growth in Expressive Communication of Infants and Toddlers With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Journal of Early Intervention ◽

10.1177/1053815121995578 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 105381512199557

Author(s):

Jay Buzhardt ◽

Anna Wallisch ◽

Dwight Irvin ◽

Brian Boyd ◽

Brenda Salley ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽

Progress Monitoring ◽

Autism Spectrum ◽

Growth Patterns ◽

Spectrum Disorder ◽

Future Research ◽

Infants And Toddlers ◽

Early Communication ◽

Children With Asd ◽

Language Growth

One of the earliest indicators of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is delay in language and social communication. Despite consensus on the benefits of earlier diagnosis and intervention, our understanding of the language growth of children with ASD during the first years of life remains limited. Therefore, this study compared communication growth patterns of infants and toddlers with ASD to growth benchmarks of a standardized language assessment. We conducted a retrospective analysis of growth on the Early Communication Indicator (ECI) of 23 infants and toddlers who received an ASD diagnosis in the future. At 42 months of age, children with ASD had significantly lower rates of gestures, single words, and multiple words, but significantly higher rates of nonword vocalizations. Children with ASD had significantly slower growth of single and multiple words, but their rate of vocalization growth was significantly greater than benchmark. Although more research is needed with larger samples, because the ECI was designed for practitioners to monitor children’s response to intervention over time, these findings show promise for the ECI’s use as a progress monitoring measure for young children with ASD. Limitations and the need for future research are discussed.

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A systematic review and meta-analysis of studies on metaphor comprehension in individuals with autism spectrum disorder: Do task properties matter?

Applied Psycholinguistics ◽

10.1017/s0142716419000328 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 40 (6) ◽

pp. 1421-1454 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Tamar Kalandadze ◽

Valentina Bambini ◽

Kari-Anne B. Næss

Keyword(s):

Systematic Review ◽

Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽

Syntactic Structure ◽

Meta Analysis ◽

Autism Spectrum ◽

Spectrum Disorder ◽

Response Format ◽

Metaphor Comprehension ◽

The Relationship

AbstractIndividuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often experience difficulty in comprehending metaphors compared to individuals with typical development (TD). However, there is a large variation in the results across studies, possibly related to the properties of the metaphor tasks. This preregistered systematic review and meta-analysis (a) explored the properties of the metaphor tasks used in ASD research, and (b) investigated the group difference between individuals with ASD and TD on metaphor comprehension, as well as the relationship between the task properties and any between-study variation. A systematic search was undertaken in seven relevant databases. Fourteen studies fulfilled our predetermined inclusion criteria. Across tasks, we detected four types of response format and a great variety of metaphors in terms of familiarity, syntactic structure, and linguistic context. Individuals with TD outperformed individuals with ASD on metaphor comprehension (Hedges’ g = −0.63). Verbal explanation response format was utilized in the study showing the largest effect size in the group comparison. However, due to the sparse experimental manipulations, the role of task properties could not be established. Future studies should consider and report task properties to determine their role in metaphor comprehension, and to inform experimental paradigms as well as educational assessment.

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