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…

This study investigates the levels of social language and vocabulary characteristics of three- to six-year-old children with autism in Vietnam. The research is based on analysis of the developmental assessment reports of 151 children with autism, and 42 parents' reports on their children's vocabulary (recorded using the Child Word Inventory form).…

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and epilepsy represent a comorbidity that negatively influences the proper development of linguistic competencies, particularly in receptive language, in the pediatric population. This group displays impairments in the auditory comprehension of both simple and complex grammatical structures, significantly limiting…

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…

Discrete trial teaching (DTT) is a common teaching methodology used within intervention for autistics/individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Practice recommendations related to using DTT for receptive language instruction includes the desired size of the array of stimuli to be presented. Some recommendations include ensuring…

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…