Electronic Toys Decrease the Quantity and Lexical Diversity of Spoken Language Produced by Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder and Age-Matched Children With Typical Development
Plain, low-tech toys beat flashy ones for getting kids to talk.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Venker’s team watched preschoolers play for short sessions. Half the kids had autism, half were typically developing.
Each child played with electronic toys that lit up or made sounds. Then they played with plain toys like blocks and dolls.
What they found
With electronic toys, every child talked less. They also used fewer different words each minute.
The drop happened in both groups. Fancy toys pulled attention away from talking.
How this fits with other research
Adams et al. (2021) saw the same drop in a different task. Bright moving distracters hurt word recognition for toddlers with autism. Together, the two papers show that too much visual or sound "pop" steals brain space from language.
Yuan et al. (2023) tracked where kids moved in a playroom. More time near toys linked to better language scores. Venker adds the toy type matters: plain toys create more talk time.
Livingston et al. (2023) tried to make toys more fun with video modeling. Venker warns us to pick toys that spark language, not just excitement.
Why it matters
If you run play-based language therapy, swap battery toys for simple ones. A set of wooden animals or a toy kitchen will pull more words out of the child. Less noise, more talk.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Many young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have language delays. Play-based interactions present a rich, naturalistic context for supporting language and communication development, but electronic toys may compromise the quality of play interactions. This study examined how electronic toys impact the quantity and lexical diversity of spoken language produced by children with ASD and age-matched children with typical development (TD), compared to traditional toys without electronic features. Twenty-eight parent-child dyads (14 per group) played with both electronic and traditional toy sets in a counter-balanced order. We transcribed child speech during both play sessions and derived the number of utterances and number of different word (NDW) roots per minute that children produced. Children with ASD and children with TD talked significantly less and produced significantly fewer unique words during electronic toy play than traditional toy play. In this way, children appear to take a “backseat” to electronic toys, decreasing their communicative contributions to play-based social interactions with their parents. These findings highlight the importance of understanding how toy type can affect parent-child play interactions and the subsequent learning opportunities that may be created. Play-based interventions for children with ASD may be most effective when they incorporate traditional toys, rather than electronic toys.
Frontiers in Psychology, 2022 · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.929589