Looking or talking: Visual attention and verbal engagement during shared book reading of preschool children on the autism spectrum

Abstract

Visual attention and active engagement during shared book reading are important for facilitating emergent literacy learning during the preschool years. Children on the autism spectrum often show difficulties in language and literacy development, yet research investigating potential indicators of shared book reading engagement, including visual attention and verbal engagement, for this group of preschoolers is currently limited. To better understand the relationship between children’s visual attention and verbal engagement during shared book reading, parent shared book reading behaviors, and children’s emergent literacy skills (e.g. receptive vocabulary and letter-name knowledge), we observed 40 preschoolers on the spectrum and their parents sharing an unfamiliar storybook. Videos of the shared book reading interactions were transcribed and coded for child and parent behaviors using observational coding schemes. Strong significant associations were found between children’s visual attention, verbal engagement, and parents’ use of questions and/or prompts during the shared book reading interaction. Contrary to expectations, children’s visual attention was not related to their emergent literacy skills. Overall, our findings emphasize the interplay between parent behaviors and how preschoolers on the spectrum engage in this important literacy-related context and provide directions for future research. Lay abstract Children who have an autism diagnosis often have trouble learning to talk and read. These difficulties become noticeable before children start school and may be linked to lower attention and engagement in literacy-related activities such as sharing storybooks with their parents. To date, few researchers have looked at possible ways to measure how children on the autism spectrum engage during shared storybook reading, for example, where children look or how much they talk, and how this may be related to their letter-name knowledge and their vocabulary knowledge. In this study, we analyzed videos of 40 preschoolers on the spectrum and their parents sharing an unfamiliar storybook. We wanted to see whether where children looked (i.e. toward the storybook, their parent, or elsewhere) and how much they talked were related to what their parents did (e.g. ask questions or provide prompts) and/or children’s letter-name knowledge and vocabulary. The videos were coded for different child and parent behaviors. We found that where children looked and how much they talked were strongly related to each other and what parents did during the shared book reading interaction, particularly asking questions and using prompts. In contrast to what we expected, where children looked was not related to children’s letter or vocabulary knowledge. Overall, results of the study draw attention to the connection between what parents do and what preschoolers on the spectrum do when sharing storybooks and provide directions for future research.

A Systematic Literature Review of Autism Research on Caregiver Talk

“…Other than follow‐in talk literature, only a few studies examined correlations between caregivers' speech acts and child variables. In a book‐reading context, caregivers' book related questions/prompts and explicit teaching were associated with children's concurrent language [Westerveld, Paynter, & Wicks, 2020], and questions/prompts were associated with children's visual attention within the session [Wicks, Paynter, & Westerveld, 2020]. Caregivers also used more clarification techniques if their autistic children had better social interaction skills, used more evocative strategies with children who had fewer behavior problems, and used more feedback strategies for children who scored lower on a pragmatic language assessment [Tipton, Blacher, & Eisenhower, 2017].…”

Sampling Engagement in Shared Reading Activities With Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Generalizability Study

“…First, there is a lack of consensus regarding the definition and measurement of engagement across learning tasks for children on the spectrum. In the context of shared book reading, engagement contains several discrete components of joint attention, including sustained visual attention to the storybook, coordinated attention to the adult, and verbal communication related to book content (Richter & Courage, 2017; Wicks et al, 2020). Differences in researchers’ operationalization and measurement of engagement will influence the generalizability of these findings.…”

“…We collected a total of 102 videos (three videos for each of the two book types for 17 participants) and coded for specific study variables. We adapted operational definitions used in this study from existing engagement coding schemas (Adamson et al, 2004; Wicks et al, 2020; Wong & Kasari, 2012) to yield five mutually exclusive engagement states: (a) active engagement, (b) visual engagement, (c) unengaged, (d) disruptive, and (e) uncodable. The active engagement code captured instances when the child was actively involved with the book reading, engaging in reciprocal verbal or nonverbal communication with the reading partner during the book reading session.…”

Prompting visual attention to print versus pictures during shared book reading with digital storybooks for preschoolers withASDcompared toTDpeers

“…Overall, children in both groups looked at the prompt AOIs while viewing the digital storybooks, suggesting F I G U R E 2 Relationships between autism characteristics and prompt types for proportion of fixations to print targets F I G U R E 3 Main effect of autism characteristics on proportion of fixations to picture targets across prompt types that prompting effectively directed their focus of visual attention to these elements. Given characteristic challenges in joint attention and results from our observational study (Wicks et al, 2020), we hypothesized that children with ASD would visually respond less to verbal plus pointing prompts within the storybook stimuli compared to TD peers. Contrary to expectations, both prompt types were similarly effective in directing children's visual attention to print and picture targets across groups.…”