Sequential Associations Between Communication Acts of Children With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorder and Maternal Verbal Responses.
Iranian moms of preschoolers with autism respond like typical moms to child-led talk and are even more in-sync when the child answers their prompts.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers watched Iranian moms and their preschoolers play at home. Half the kids had autism, half were typically developing.
The team coded every child talk act and every mom reply. They used lag-sequential stats to see if moms answered faster or slower after child-led versus mom-prompted talk.
What they found
Moms of kids with autism responded just as quickly to spontaneous child talk as moms of typical kids.
When the child spoke right after mom asked something, moms of autistic kids were even more in-sync than the other moms.
How this fits with other research
Li et al. (2024) extends this idea. They showed moms who keep the child in charge during recasts get more topic starts and longer replies from autistic kids.
Krupa et al. (2024) seems to disagree. They found Tamil-speaking autistic preschoolers stay unengaged even when moms try hard. The clash fades when you see the studies measure different things: Atieh looked at mom timing, Murugesan looked at child engagement state.
Worsham et al. (2015) set the stage. Babies later diagnosed with ASD already grow gesture-plus-voice combos more slowly, so preschool moms may be compensating for that early gap.
Why it matters
You can reassure parents they already match typical moms when they answer child-initiated talk. Build on that strength.
Prompt a child with a question, then pause and really listen; your quick, on-topic reply boosts synchrony even more. Use this simple turn-taking loop to warm up language practice in natural play.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
In this study, the sequential associations between child communication acts, including spontaneous communication (SC) and elicited communication (EC), and the types of verbal responses of Iranian mothers (follow-in nondirective, follow-in directive, and redirective responses) were compared between children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and young typically developing (TD) children. Participants were 29 children with ASD aged 3-6 years and 40 TD children aged 13-18 months, matched on expressive vocabulary. Using time-window sequential analysis, maternal verbal responses within a time interval of 3 sec following child communication were examined during 15 min of video-recorded mother-child free play interaction. Mothers in the two groups had broadly similar patterns of response to child communication acts, but some differences in responding to child EC. Across both groups, sequential associations were stronger for maternal follow-in nondirective responses to child SC than for this type of response to child EC, and were stronger for follow-in directive responses to child EC than for follow-in directive responses to child SC. Child EC and SC acts were less likely to be followed by redirective responses than other maternal responses, again across both groups. Finally, mothers of children with ASD were more likely than mothers of TD children to follow-in to child EC with both nondirective and directive responses. Our findings suggest that mothers of children with ASD synchronize their responses with their child's SC acts to the same extent as mothers of TD children, and are more synchronous in responding to their child's EC acts. LAY SUMMARY: This observational study examined how Iranian mothers verbally responded to their children's communication acts, based on whether the children's communication was spontaneous (unprompted) or elicited (prompted by the mother). Mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder or typical development responded to their children's spontaneous communication acts in similar ways, but showed some differences in responding to children's elicited communication. By prompting their children to communicate, mothers create opportunities to give additional verbal responses to their children, which may help to support children's further language development.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2021 · doi:10.1002/aur.2382