Joint Attention (JA) and Supported Joint Engagement (Supported JE) have each been reported to predict later language development in typically developing (TD) children and children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). In this longitudinal study including 33 TD children (20 months at V1) and 30 children with ASD (33 months at V1), the contributions…

Children vary in their ability to use language in social contexts and this has important consequences for wellbeing. We review studies that test whether individual differences in pragmatic skill are associated with formal language ability, mentalizing, and executive functions in both typical and atypical development. The strongest and most…

Attentional difficulties are evident in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Accordingly, mothers of children with ASD may modify communication to direct their child's attention, and this pattern may generalize to later-born children. This study examined patterns of child-directed communication in 11 mothers of 18-month-old toddlers at…

We investigated "scalar implicature" in adolescents and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to test whether theory of mind deficits associated with autism affect pragmatic inferences in language. We tested scalar implicature computation in adolescents with ASD (12-18 years) and asked whether they reason about mental states when…