Adult humans process communicative interactions by recognizing that information is being communicated through speech (linguistic ability) and simultaneously evaluating how to respond appropriately (social-pragmatic ability). These abilities may originate in infancy. Infants understand how speech communicates in social interactions, helping them…

Persuasion is an essential social skill. Yet its development and underpinnings are poorly understood. In 2 studies, a total of 167 children aged 3 to 12 years took theory of mind (ToM) tests and participated in unscripted, seminaturalistic persuasive conversations. Children were typically developing (TD) or had deafness or autism spectrum disorder…

Positive emotional engagement develops in the context of face-to-face interactions during the first 6 months of life. Deficits in emotional engagement are characteristic of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and may characterize the younger siblings of children with ASD (high-risk siblings). High-risk siblings are likely to exhibit a broad range of…

This longitudinal study investigated whether variation in the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) and early parent-child interactions predicted later empathic behavior in 84 toddlers at high or low familial risk for autism spectrum disorder. Two well-studied OXTR single-nucleotide polymorphisms, rs53576 and rs2254298, were examined. Parent-child…

Consequences of theory of mind (ToM) development for daily social lives of children are uncertain. Five to 13-year-olds (N = 195) with typical development, autism, or deafness (both native and late signers) took ToM tests and their teachers reported on their social skills for peer interaction (e.g., leadership, group entry). Groups differed in…

We examined 2 hypotheses concerning the development of "audience design" by contrasting children with and without autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) in referential communication. The 2-stage hypothesis predicts that the ability to use contrastive size adjectives for ambiguity avoidance develops separately from and faster than the ability…

The development of imitation during the second year of life plays an important role in domains of sociocognitive development such as language and social learning. Deficits in imitation ability in persons with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) from toddlerhood into adulthood have also been repeatedly documented, raising the possibility that early…

There is strong evidence to suggest that individuals with autism show atypicalities in multiple cognitive domains, including theory of mind (ToM), executive function (EF), and central coherence (CC). In this study, the longitudinal relationships among these 3 aspects of cognition in autism were investigated. Thirty-seven cognitively able children…

Communication spontaneously initiated by infants at heightened risk (HR; n = 15) for autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is compared with that in low-risk (LR; n = 15) infants at 13 and 18 months of age. Infants were observed longitudinally during naturalistic in-home interaction and semistructured play with caregivers. At both ages, HR infants…

Social life rests in large part on the capacity to understand the intentions behind the behavior of others. What are the origins of this capacity? How is one to construe its development in ontogenesis? By assuming that action understanding can be explained only in terms of the ability to read the minds of others--that is, to represent mental…

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have been gaining attention, partly as an example of unusual developmental trajectories related to early neurobiological differences. The present investigation addressed the process of learning new words to explore mechanisms of language delay and impairment. The sample included 21 typically developing toddlers…

The objective of the current study was to evaluate the patterns of longitudinal change in the language abilities of 28 children with autism during early and middle childhood. Results from fitting a series of multilevel models showed that children's rate of language growth was independently predicted by (a) children's responsiveness to others' bids…

Studied children's grasp of make-believe transformations they had seen enacted. Children indicated the pretend outcome by choosing a picture depicting no change or a picture depicting the pretend change. Older children chose correctly, even with the addition of a picture of an irrelevant transformation, but younger children did not. Autistic…

In one experiment, autistic children continued to fail a task that involved strategic deception when no opponent was present. In a second experiment that involved reaching for an object under direct and detour conditions, autistic children had greater difficulty with the task than did nonautistic, mentally handicapped children. Cites advantages…

Investigated the ability to deceive in participants with autism, mental retardation (MR), and normal development. Results indicated that participants with autism and those with MR did not differ in their ability to use a deceptive method, but participants with autism were significantly less able to understand that they manipulated the beliefs of…