Spoken narrative skills are crucial to the social and academic success of young people; however, research indicates that this may be an area of challenge for autistic adolescents. Most previous studies have used narrative elicitation tasks that incorporate visual support, and little is known about how autistic adolescents perform on less…

Developmental difference is a common characteristic of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with unclear sex differences. The current study included 610 children with ASD, aged between 2 and 7 years, with completed language profiles. We used a nonparametric item response theory model called Mokken scale analysis to examine the order of acquisition of…

Purpose: Conversational latency entails the temporal feature of turn-taking, which is understudied in autistic children. The current study investigated the influences of child-based and parental factors on conversational latency in autistic children with heterogeneous spoken language abilities. Method: Participants were 46 autistic children aged…

Joint attention and imitation are thought to facilitate a developmental cascade of language and social communication skills. Delays in developing these skills may affect the quality of children's social interactions and subsequent language development. We examined how responding to joint attention and object imitation skills predicted rate of…

Previous research links resting frontal gamma power to key developmental outcomes in young neurotypical (NT) children and infants at risk for language impairment. However, it remains unclear whether gamma power is specifically associated with language or with more general cognitive abilities among young children diagnosed with autism spectrum…

Purpose: The goal of this work was to examine the semantic and syntactic properties of the vocabularies of autistic and non-autistic infants and toddlers to see if children in these two groups know different kinds of words. We focused on both receptive and expressive vocabularies. For expressive vocabulary, we looked only at the "active"…

Parents assessed the development of 12,081 two- to six-year-old children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) quarterly for three years on five subscales: combinatorial receptive language, expressive language, sociability, sensory awareness, and health. Longer duration of time spent with an adult actively involved in the same activity (termed here…

Improving social communication is a frequent goal of early autism services. However, it is unclear whether existing models of social communication align with the perspectives and priorities of key stakeholders, including parents, teachers, and expert clinicians. Stakeholder perspectives on social communication characteristics and priorities for…

Purpose: This study evaluates the extent to which automated indices of vocal development are stable and valid for predicting language in infants at increased familial likelihood for autism and/or language impairment and relatively lower likelihood infants. Method: A group of infants with autistic siblings (Sibs-autism; 20 infants) and a comparison…

As early identification of autism improves, there is a critical need for interventions to support the development of social communication skills in toddlers. Caregiver coaching and parental involvement is crucial for improving outcomes and providing children with adequate hours of planned active engagement. This pilot study assessed a 4-week…

Purpose: Despite known motor and spoken language impairments in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the motor skills underlying speech production and their relationship with language skills have rarely been directly investigated in this population. Method: Thirty-nine autistic children (14 minimally verbal [MV], 25 verbal [V]) and 11 non-autistic…

The effect associated with the presence of seizures in 2 to 5-year-old autistic children was investigated in the largest and the longest observational study to-date. Parents assessed the development of 8461 children quarterly for three years on five orthogonal subscales: combinatorial receptive language, expressive language, sociability, sensory…

Individuals with Asperger Syndrome (AS) often face difficulties in social communication and language skills, encompassing comprehension and production in both their first and second languages. English as a second language has been one of the most common communication tools and a school subject for decades in Asia; therefore, mastering English…

Purpose: Toddlers with Down syndrome (DS) showcase comparable or higher rates of gestures than chronological age-- and language-matched toddlers without DS. Little is known about how gesture use in toddlers with DS relates to multiple domains of development, including motor, pragmatics, language, and visual reception (VR) skills. Unexplored is…

Purpose: This study examines the effects of communication sample length on the reliability and convergent validity of six vocal measures for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with minimal verbal skills. The results are expected to inform recommendations for the length of communication samples for clinical and research purposes. Method:…