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.

自闭症谱系障碍 (ASD) 的最早指标之一是语言和社交交流延迟。尽管对早期诊断和干预的益处达成了共识，但我们对 ASD 儿童在生命最初几年的语言发展的理解仍然有限。因此，本研究将患有 ASD 的婴幼儿的交流增长模式与标准化语言评估的增长基准进行了比较。我们对未来接受 ASD 诊断的 23 名婴幼儿的早期沟通指标 (ECI) 进行了回顾性分析。在 42 个月大时，自闭症儿童的手势、单个单词和多个单词的比率显着降低，但非单词发声的比率显着更高。自闭症儿童的单个和多个单词的增长明显较慢，但他们的发声增长速度明显高于基准。尽管需要对更大的样本进行更多的研究，因为 ECI 是为从业者设计的，以监测儿童对干预措施的反应，但这些发现表明 ECI 有望用作 ASD 幼儿的进展监测措施。讨论了局限性和未来研究的必要性。