Communicative Gesture Use in Infants With and Without Autism: A Retrospective Home Video Study

Abstract

Purpose-Compare gesture use in infants with autism to infants with other developmental disabilities (DD) or typical development (TD).Method-Children with autism (n = 43), other DD (n = 30), and TD (n = 36) were recruited at ages 2 to 7 years. Parents provided home videotapes of children in infancy. Staff compiled video samples for two age intervals (9-12 and 15-18 months), and coded samples for frequency of social interaction (SI), behavior regulation (BR), and joint attention (JA) gestures.Results-At 9-12 months, infants with autism were less likely to use JA gestures than infants with other DD or TD, and less likely to use BR gestures than infants with TD. At 15-18 months, infants with autism were less likely than infants with other DD to use SI or JA gestures, and less likely than infants with TD to use BR, SI, or JA gestures. Among infants able to use gestures, infants with autism used fewer BR gestures than those with TD at 9-12 months, and fewer JA gestures than infants with other DD or TD at 15-18 months.Conclusions-Differences in gesture use in infancy have implications for early autism screening, assessment, and intervention.

Vocal Patterns in Infants with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Canonical Babbling Status and Vocalization Frequency

“…Substantial effort has addressed gestural and social development and their potential roles in detection within the first year of life (e.g., Watson, Crais, Baranek, Dykstra, & Wilson, 2013). The present results offer parallel findings in the domain of vocal development by demonstrating significant group differences in canonical babbling status, canonical babbling ratio, and total syllables produced (volubility) during the first year of life.…”

Volubility, consonant, and syllable characteristics in infants and toddlers later diagnosed with childhood apraxia of speech: A pilot study

“…as well as special events such as holidays and birthdays. To ascertain whether the context of the videos was similar across the two groups, 10% of the video clips were randomly selected by graduate students in speech-language pathology blind to the participant's diagnostic status and, after training by the first author, were coded following procedures similar to those described in the literature (Patten et al, 2014;Watson, Crais, Baranek, Dykstra, and Wilson, 2013). Each clip was coded according to number of persons in the video, the level of social interaction, the amount of physical restriction of the child, and the level of social intrusion and/or verbal encouragement used by adults or other children to engage a verbal or nonverbal response from the child; equal sample sizes were randomly selected among the 10% for analysis.…”

Early social communication in infants with fragile X syndrome and infant siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder

“…It is important to use a measure that reflects differences in prelinguistic complexity because it may be this very complexity that differentially predicts outcomes. For example, children with ASD not only gesture less than children with other types of intellectual disability or TD, they point less and communicate less often for joint attention or commenting (Dawson et al, 2004; Watson, Crais, Baranek, Dykstra, & Wilson, 2013). Similarly, children with FXS without ASD use more gestures for joint attention whereas children with FXS and co-morbid ASD use relatively more giving gestures (Esplund, 2015).…”