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Conversations with autistic children: contingent relationships between features of adult input and children's response adequacy.

The relationship between certain features of adult speech and autistic children's response adequacy was examined within the context of unstructured, dyadic conversations. On separate sessions, four verbal, nonecholalic children were observed talking with their mothers and teachers. Analysis of conversational turns showed that as the number of facilitating features contained in adults' eliciting utterances increased, the proportion of adequate replies from the children increased. In this analysis, facilitating features included the use of Yes/No questions, questions that were conceptually simple, and questions that were semantically contingent on the child's topic. In a further analysis, it was found that adults tended to modify their use of these features in response to child feedback, although this tendency was relatively small and observed only in a minority of the sequences evaluated. The findings are discussed in terms of pragmatic deficits associated with autism and implications for intervention with this population.

Autistic Disorder↗

Comparisons between autistic and nonautistic children on the Test for Auditory Comprehension of Language.

Expressive language differences between autistic and nonautistic populations have been a topic of research in the past decade, yet little information is available in regard to the receptive language performances based on standardized tests. Questions as to the existence of sex differences in language have also been raised. The study examines the performance of 19 matched pairs of autistic and nonautistic children on the Test for Auditory Comprehension of Language. As well, the data were analyzed according to sex for each group. The results indicated that there were no significant differences between groups or between the sexes in either group. Questions for further research are raised.

Autistic Disorder↗

The use of the ADI-R as a diagnostic tool in the differential diagnosis of children with infantile autism and children with a receptive language disorder.

Children with infantile autism and children with a specific receptive language disorder often show similar behavioural problems, making the differentiation between these two diagnostic categories difficult. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the usefulness of parental information in the differential diagnosis of the two types of disorders mentioned above. Sixteen children with a receptive language disorder and 11 children with infantile autism participated in the study. All children had normal non-verbal IQs. The ADI-R (Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised) was performed with all children. The results showed that the ADI-R items reflecting behavioural features at pre-school age (age range 4-5 years) were better suited to differentiate the groups than the items reflecting behavioural features at the time of the investigation (mean age: 9 years). The items on the dimension "Reciprocal social interaction" and "Communication and language" discriminated the groups better than the items of the dimension "Restricted interests". According to the ICD-10 algorithm of the ADI-R one child with autism and one child with a receptive language disorder were falsely classified. These false classifications were mainly due to a distorted parental perception of the child's behaviour. The ADI-R is a useful tool in the differential diagnosis of developmental disorders.

Algorithms↗

Network model of decreased context utilization in autism spectrum disorder.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) demonstrate impaired utilization of context, which allows for superior performance on the "false memory" task. We report the application of a simplified parallel distributed processing model of context utilization to the false memory task. For individuals without ASD, experiments support a model wherein presentation of one word, e.g., ''apple,'' strongly activates the neighboring nodes of closely related words such as ''fruit,'' ''tree,'' whereas in ASD these neighboring nodes are relatively less activated. We demonstrate this model to be consistent with the superior performance on recognition testing on the false memory test, but not on free recall. This may have an anatomic basis in diminished hippocampal neuronal arborization and the abnormal minicolumnar pathology in ASD.

Association Learning↗

Mother-child interactions: a comparison of a clinic-referred developmentally delayed group and two non-delayed groups.

The purpose of the present study was to compare a clinic-referred sample of developmentally delayed children to two groups of children who were not delayed: a clinic-referred sample and a nonclinic sample. Multiple outcome measures, including home observations of mother-child interactions, parental perceptions of child adjustment, and parental measures of depression and marital adjustment, were utilized. The results indicated that the delayed sample differed from the two nondelayed samples primarily in terms of emitting more maternal behavior, particularly the number of commands issued. A lower rate of compliance to total maternal commands also occurred for the delayed group. Finally, the clinic-referred delayed sample differed from the nonclinic non-delayed sample by perceiving their children as less well-adjusted. Implications of the results are discussed.

Attitude↗

A test of central coherence theory: linguistic processing in high-functioning adults with autism or Asperger syndrome: is local coherence impaired?

Central coherence theory (Frith, U., 1989. Autism: Explaining the Enigma. Blackwell, Oxford.) is addressed by exploring linguistic processing in normally intelligent adults with either autism or Asperger syndrome, to test whether local coherence is impaired. Local coherence is the ability to make contextually meaningful connections between linguistic information in short-term or working memory. Experiment 1 demonstrated that individuals with an autism spectrum condition were less likely to use the sentence context spontaneously to provide the context-appropriate pronunciation of a homograph. Experiment 2 presented scenarios which had a situation and outcome which only cohered if a bridging inference was drawn. The clinical groups were less likely to select the most coherent (bridging) inference from competing alternatives. Experiment 3 demonstrated that individuals with an autism spectrum condition were less able to use context to interpret an auditorily presented ambiguous sentence. The findings from Experiments 2 and 3 suggest that individuals with autism or Asperger syndrome have a difficulty in achieving local coherence, while the evidence from Experiment 1 suggests a preference not to strive for coherence. Taken together, these results suggest that individuals with an autism spectrum condition are impaired in achieving local coherence, and they have a preference not to strive for coherence unless instructed to do so, or unless they make a conscious decision to do so. Moreover, the three experiments correlate with one another, which suggests that central coherence may be a unitary force in these different tasks. Of the two clinical groups, the autism group had the greater difficulty in achieving coherence. Possible explanations for the clinical groups' difficulty are explored.

Adolescent↗

The time course for language acquisition in biologically distinct populations: evidence from deaf individuals.

The present study provides evidence that individuals who have different patterns of cerebral lateralization and who develop along different maturational time courses can attain comparable levels of language proficiency. Right-handed individuals with left-handed family members (left-handed familials, LHFs) showed a shorter sensitive period for language acquisition than did right-handed individuals with only right-handed family members (right-handed familials, RHFs). The shorter sensitive period for LHFs may be due to a focus on non-linguistic, word-based conceptual information during language acquisition. RHFs may focus on grammatical relations during language acquisition, which matures later than lexical knowledge. This suggests that there may be different patterns of cerebral lateralization for language in all normal populations as a function of familial handedness.

Adolescent↗

Update on the language disorders of individuals on the autistic spectrum.

Inadequate language is a defining feature of the autism spectrum disorders (autism). Autism is a behaviorally and dimensionally defined developmental disorder of the immature brain that has a broad range of severity and many etiologies, with multiple genes involved. Early studies, which focused on the language of verbal children on the autistic spectrum, emphasized aberrant features of their speech such as unusual word choices, pronoun reversal, echolalia, incoherent discourse, unresponsiveness to questions, aberrant prosody, and lack of drive to communicate. Persistent lack of speech of some individuals was attributed to the severity of their autism and attendant mental retardation rather than possible inability to decode auditory language. Clinical study of unselected children with autism indicated that the language deficits of preschoolers fall into two broad types, perhaps with subtypes, those that involve reception and production of phonology (sounds of speech) and syntax (grammar), and those that do not but involve semantics (meaning) and pragmatics (communicative use of language, processing, and production of discourse). Except for the preschoolers' universally deficient pragmatics and comprehension of speech, many of their language deficits parallel those of non-autistic preschoolers with developmental language disorders. There is now biological support for the clinical observation that young autistic children are language disordered as well as autistic. Recent electrophysiological studies disclose auditory input abnormalities in lateral temporal cortex even in verbal individuals on the autistic spectrum. Severe receptive deficits for phonology enhance the risk for epilepsy. Genetic studies indicate that linkage to chromosome 7q31-33 is limited to families with evidence for phonologic impairment as well as autism. Clearly, social and cognitive disorders alone provide an inadequate explanation for the range of language deficits in autism.

Auditory Perception↗

Sensorimotor performance in school-age children with autism, developmental language disorder, or low IQ.

The purpose of the study was to determine the prevalence of 'soft' motor deficits in school-aged children with either developmental language disorder (DLD), autism (with high IQ [HiAD] or low IQ [LoAD]), or low IQ without autism (LoIQ), and to evaluate the utility of a refined neurological examination to discriminate between these groups. A total of 242 children (74% male), aged 7 or 9 years, were evaluated as part of a longitudinal, multi-institutional study, with a standardized neurological examination that included Denckla's Physical and Neurological Examination for Soft Signs. Most of the scores separated children into two groups defined by nonverbal IQ, with the DLD and HiAD groups performing better than the LoAD and LoIQ groups. Exceptions included motor impersistence and stereotypies, which were more likely in the autistic groups. The neurologists' summary clinical impressions indicated better sensory/motor skills, oromotor skills, and praxis in the HiAD than in the DLD children. Inability/unwillingness to perform tasks was much more frequent in LoAD than LoIQ children.

Autistic Disorder↗

Social language use in parents of autistic individuals.

Social language use (pragmatics) in parents of autistic individuals and controls was compared. Autism parents displayed atypical pragmatic behaviours more often than controls. Preliminary factor analysis suggested three parsimonious groupings of pragmatic abnormalities: Disinhibited Social Communication, Awkward/Inadequate Expression, and Odd Verbal Interaction. The pragmatic features observed in some autism parents are milder but conceptually similar to the social language deficits of autism. Possible reasons for familial aggregation of pragmatic language deficits are discussed.

Autistic Disorder↗

The role of distinctive features in articulation errors.

Articulation errors of 1,077 children of various ages, etiologies, and sexes were taken from several standardized articulation tests. The Singh and Singh (1976) distinctive feature system was used to produce profiles for each subgroup for consonant phonemes in the initial, medial, and final word positions. Distinctive features were used with different degrees of importance causing hierarchial orders among the features. The hierarchy of features established in this study was consistent with those found in previous studies. It was more pronounced for the initial position than for the medial and final positions, and for the younger age groups as compared with the older groups. In addition, the feature hierarchy for the articulation-disordered group was more distinct than that for the language group. Females revealed a generally superior performance to males, but this superiority was in general not statistically significant. Findings are discussed as to their relevance in the overall application of a phonological theory to speech production strategies.

Adolescent↗

Markedness of features in the articulatory substitutions of children.

This study concerns an analysis of articulatory substitutions of 801 students using markedness theory and a distinctive feature model (Singh & Singh, 1976). The 556 male and 245 female students ranged in age from 3--7 years and were diagnosed as evidencing an articulatory disorder or a linguistic delay. Significantly more feature substitutions moved from marked to unmarked values than from unmarked to marked values (p less than .05, binomial distribution). The study proposed a hierarchy of distinctive features in terms of markedness rather than in terms of features per se. The applications of articulatory and acoustic data to phonological theory and the implications of the findings to speech treatment are discussed.

Articulation Disorders↗

Interstitial deletion of 13q22-->q31: case report and review of the literature.

In the present study we describe a patient with characteristic brachydactily, developmental delay and interstitial del 13q22-->q31. After the review of the literature, few cases sharing similar chromosomal deletions were found and they displayed little resemblance with our patient. We discuss the phenotype correlation among the deleted regions in such cases.

Abnormalities, Multiple↗

Interactions of language and memory in deaf children and adults.

This article reviews theoretical and empirical issues concerning the relations of language and memory in deaf children and adults. An integration of previous studies, together with the presentation of new findings, suggests that there is an intimate relation between spoken language and memory. Either spoken language or sign language can serve as a natural mode of communication for young children (deaf or hearing), leading to normal language, social, and cognitive development. Nevertheless, variation in spoken language abilities can be shown to have a direct impact on memory span. Although the ways in which memory span can effect other cognitive processes and academic achievement are not considered in depth here, several variables that can have direct impact on the language-memory interaction are considered. These findings have clear implications for the education of deaf children.

Adult↗