Background and aims

The quality of parent verbal input—diverse vocabulary that is well-matched to the child’s developmental level within interactions that are responsive to their interests—has been found to positively impact child language skills. For typically developing (TD) children, there is evidence that more advanced linguistic and social development differentially elicits higher quality parent input, suggesting a bidirectional relationship between parent and child. The purpose of this study was to evaluate if toddlers with ASD also differentially elicit parental verbal input by (1) analyzing the quality of parent input to the communicative behavior of their toddlers with ASD, (2) examining if parents respond differentially to more advanced toddler communicative behavior, as measured by the coordination of multiple communicative behaviors, and (3) exploring the relationship between parental responsiveness to child communicative behaviors and change in child communication and social skills.

Methods

Participants were 77 toddlers with ASD age 18-39 months and a parent who participated in a larger RCT. Ten-minute parent–toddler interactions were recorded prior to a 12-week intervention. Parent response to child communicative behaviors was coded following each child communicative behavior as no acknowledgment, responsive, directive, or nonverbal acknowledgment. Parent number of different words and difference between parent and child MLU in words were calculated separately for responsive and directive parent utterances. Child growth in language and social skills was measured using the Vineland II Communication and Socialization domain scores, respectively.

Results

(1) Parents were largely responsive to their toddler’s communication. When being responsive (as opposed to directive), parents used a greater number of different words within utterances that were well-matched to child language; (2) when toddlers coordinated communicative behaviors (versus producing an isolated communicative behavior), parents were more likely to respond and their replies were more likely to be responsive; and (3) parent responsiveness to child coordinated communication was significantly correlated with change in Vineland II Socialization but not Communication. A unique role of gaze coordinated child communication in eliciting responsive parental behaviors and improving growth in child social skills emerged.

Conclusions

Our results support a bidirectional process between responsive parent verbal input and the social development of toddlers with ASD, with less sophisticated child communicative behaviors eliciting lower quality parent input.

Implications: Our findings highlight the critical role of early parent-mediated intervention for children with ASD generally, and to enhance eye gaze through parent responsivity more specifically.

中文翻译：

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自闭症幼儿父母对儿童交际行为的不同反应

背景和目标

父母口头输入的质量——在对孩子的兴趣做出反应的互动中，与孩子的发展水平相匹配的多样化词汇——已被发现对孩子的语言技能产生积极影响。对于正常发育 (TD) 的儿童，有证据表明，更高级的语言和社会发展会不同地引发更高质量的父母输入，这表明父母与孩子之间存在双向关系。本研究的目的是评估患有 ASD 的幼儿是否也会通过以下方式不同地引发父母的语言输入：(1) 分析父母对患有 ASD 的幼儿的交流行为的输入质量，(2) 检查父母是否对更高级的幼儿做出不同的反应交际行为，通过多种交际行为的协调来衡量，

方法

参与者是 77 名年龄在 18-39 个月的患有 ASD 的幼儿和一位参加了更大的随机对照试验的父母。在为期 12 周的干预之前，我们记录了 10 分钟的亲子互动。父母对儿童交际行为的反应在每个儿童交际行为之后被编码为不承认、回应、指令或非语言承认。对于反应性和指令性父母话语，分别计算父母不同单词的数量和单词中父母和孩子 MLU 之间的差异。儿童在语言和社交技能方面的成长分别使用 Vineland II 交流和社交领域得分来衡量。

结果

(1) 父母对幼儿的交流有很大的反应。当做出回应（而不是指令）时，父母会在与儿童语言非常匹配的话语中使用更多不同的词；(2) 当蹒跚学步的幼儿协调交流行为时（相对于产生孤立的交流行为），父母更有可能做出回应，他们的回答也更有可能做出回应；(3) 父母对儿童协调沟通的反应与 Vineland II 社会化的变化显着相关，但与沟通无关。出现了凝视协调儿童交流在引发响应性父母行为和改善儿童社交技能发展方面的独特作用。

结论

我们的结果支持反应性父母语言输入与患有 ASD 的幼儿的社会发展之间的双向过程，不太复杂的儿童交流行为会引发较低质量的父母输入。

启示：我们的研究结果强调了早期父母介导的干预对一般 ASD 儿童的关键作用，并更具体地通过父母的反应来增强眼睛注视。