scholarly journals How do minimally verbal children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder use communicative gestures to complement their spoken language abilities?

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 239694152110350
Author(s):  
Chelsea La Valle ◽  
Karen Chenausky ◽  
Helen Tager-Flusberg
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Children And Adolescents ◽  
Social Communication ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Minimally Verbal ◽  
Language Abilities ◽  
Communicative Functions ◽  
Adolescents With Autism ◽  
Minimally Verbal Children

Background and aims Prior work has examined how children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder who are minimally verbal use their spoken language abilities during interactions with others. However, social communication includes other aspects beyond speech. To our knowledge, no studies have examined how minimally verbal children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder are using their gestural communication during social interactions. Such work can provide important insights into how gestures may complement their spoken language abilities. Methods Fifty minimally verbal children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder participated ( Mage = 12.41 years; 38 males). Gestural communication was coded from the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule. Children ( n = 25) and adolescents ( n = 25) were compared on their production of gestures, gesture–speech combinations, and communicative functions. Communicative functions were also assessed by the type of communication modality: gesture, speech, and gesture–speech to examine the range of communicative functions across different modalities of communication. To explore the role gestures may play the relation between speech utterances and gestural production was investigated. Results Analyses revealed that (1) minimally verbal children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder did not differ in their total number of gestures. The most frequently produced gesture across children and adolescents was a reach gesture, followed by a point gesture (deictic gesture), and then conventional gestures. However, adolescents produced more gesture–speech combinations (reinforcing gesture-speech combinations) and displayed a wider range of communicative functions. (2) Overlap was found in the types of communicative functions expressed across different communication modalities. However, requests were conveyed via gesture more frequently compared to speech or gesture–speech. In contrast, dis/agree/acknowledging and responding to a question posed by the conversational partner was expressed more frequently via speech compared to gesture or gesture–speech. (3) The total number of gestures was negatively associated with total speech utterances after controlling for chronological age, receptive communication ability, and nonverbal IQ. Conclusions Adolescents may be employing different communication strategies to maintain the conversational exchange and to further clarify the message they want to convey to the conversational partner. Although overlap occurred in communicative functions across gesture, speech, and gesture–speech, nuanced differences emerged in how often they were expressed across different modalities of communication. Given their speech production abilities, gestures may play a compensatory role for some individuals with autism spectrum disorder who are minimally verbal. Implications Findings underscore the importance of assessing multiple modalities of communication to provide a fuller picture of their social communication abilities. Our results identified specific communicative strengths and areas for growth that can be targeted and expanded upon within gesture and speech to optimize social communication development.

scholarly journals An experimental study of word learning in minimally verbal children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 239694151983471 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M Joseph ◽  
Daniela Plesa Skwerer ◽  
Brady Eggleston ◽  
Steven R Meyer ◽  
Helen Tager-Flusberg
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Children And Adolescents ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Word Learning ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Minimally Verbal ◽  
Adolescents With Autism ◽  
Novel Words

Background and aims When children hear a novel word, they tend to associate it with a novel rather than a familiar object. The ability to map a novel word to its corresponding referent is thought to depend, at least in part, on language-learning strategies, such as mutual exclusivity and lexical contrast. Although the importance of word learning strategies has been broadly investigated in typically developing children as well as younger children with autism spectrum disorder, who are usually language delayed, there is a paucity of research on such strategies and their role in language learning in school-age children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder who have failed to develop fluent speech. In this study, we examined the ability of minimally verbal children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder to learn and retain novel words in an experimental task, as well as the cognitive, language, and social correlates of these abilities. We were primarily interested in the characteristics that differentiated between three subgroups of participants: those unable to use word learning strategies, particularly mutual exclusivity, to learn novel words; those able to learn novel words over several exposure trials but not able retain them; and those able to retain the words they learned. Methods Participants were 29 minimally verbal individuals with autism spectrum disorder from 5 to 17 years of age. Participants completed a computerized touchscreen novel-word-learning procedure followed by assessments of immediate retention and of delayed retention, two hours later. Participants were grouped according to whether they passed/failed at least 7 of 8 (binomial p < .035) novel word learning trials and 7 of 8 immediate or delayed retention trials, and were compared on measures of nonverbal IQ, receptive and expressive vocabulary, phonological processing, joint attention and symptom severity. Results Of 29 participants, 14 failed both learning and immediate retention, 8 passed learning but failed immediate retention, and 7 passed both learning and immediate retention. Group performance was highly similar for delayed retention. Language level, particularly expressive vocabulary, differentiated between participants who did and did not succeed in retention, even while controlling for differences in nonverbal IQ. Conclusions The ability of minimally verbal school-age children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder to identify the referents of novel words was associated with nonverbal cognitive abilities. Retention of words was associated with concurrent expressive language abilities. Implications Our findings of associations between the retention of novel words acquired in a lab-based experimental task and concurrent language ability warrants further investigation with larger samples and longitudinal research designs, which may support the incorporation of contrastive word learning strategies into language learning interventions for severely language-impaired individuals with autism spectrum disorder.

scholarly journals Characterizing the early vocabulary profiles of preverbal and minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder

Autism ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 136236132097379
Author(s):  
Eileen Haebig ◽  
Eva Jiménez ◽  
Christopher R Cox ◽  
Thomas T Hills
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Social Communication ◽  
Children With Autism ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Minimally Verbal ◽  
Vocabulary Size ◽  
Sound Effects ◽  
Minimally Verbal Children

Children with autism spectrum disorder often have significant language delays. But do they learn language differently than neurotypical toddlers? We compared the lexical skills of 64 preverbal and minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder to 461 vocabulary-size-matched typically developing toddlers. We also examined social features of verb knowledge using a novel collection of social ratings. Children with autism spectrum disorder produced proportionally more verbs than typically developing toddlers. Children with autism spectrum disorder produced proportionally more action and food words, while typically developing toddlers produced proportionally more animal, people words, and animal sounds and sound effects. Children with autism spectrum disorder also produced “mommy” and “daddy” at lower rates. We discuss how these differences may reflect an association between lexical development and weaknesses in social communication. Lay abstract Although preverbal and minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder represent a significant portion of the autism spectrum disorder population, we have a limited understanding of and characterization of them. Although it is a given that their lexical profiles contain fewer words, it is important to determine whether (a) the words preverbal and minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder produce are similar to the first words typically developing children produce or (b) there are unique features of the limited words that preverbal and minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder produce. The current study compared the early word profiles of preverbal and minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder to vocabulary-matched typically developing toddlers. Children with autism spectrum disorder produced proportionally more verbs than typically developing toddlers. Also, children with autism spectrum disorder produced proportionally more action and food words, while typically developing toddlers produced proportionally more animal words, animal sounds and sound effects, and people words. Children with autism spectrum disorder also produced “mommy” and “daddy” at lower rates. Our findings identified several areas of overlap in early word learning; however, our findings also point to differences that may be connected to core weaknesses in social communication (i.e. people words). The findings highlight words and categories that could serve as useful targets for communication intervention with preverbal and minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder.

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