The Influence of the Frequency of Maternal Speech Acts vs. Children's Responsiveness to Those Speech Acts in Typically Developing Children and Children with Autism

Background: Mothers use various speech acts during children's second and third year of life that facilitate language development (Ninio & Snow, 1996). For example, mothers who ask more Y/N- Questions have children who later use more auxiliary verbs (Newport, Gleitman, & Gleitman, 1977). We know that joint attention facilitates language growth in typically developing children and children with autism (Rosenthal-Rollins and Snow, 1998). Little research has explored whether different types of maternal speech acts facilitate language in children with autism.

Objectives: To investigate how specific maternal speech acts, and children's responsiveness to these, influence their language development.

Methods: 10 boys with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and 14 typically developing children (TYP) were studied longitudinally. Every four months (ASD: 33-45 months old; TYP: 17-29 months old), mother-child dyads participated in 15 minute free play sessions, which were transcribed and analyzed. The groups were roughly equivalent in language production at visits 2 and 3.

Results: Few relationships emerged between the frequency of maternal speech acts and children's subsequent language. Many relationships were found between children's responsiveness to specific speech acts and their subsequent language. Additionally, at visit 2, responsiveness to all types of maternal speech acts influenced children's language for the TYP group. These widespread responsiveness effects were not seen for the ASD group until visit 3.

Conclusions: Findings suggest that it is not mothers' usage of specific speech acts that facilitates language, but instead how children responded to these speech acts. By responding to certain speech acts, the children may have been forced to use certain elements of speech. Certain speech acts may only influence children's language when the children are "engaged" during that utterance. Therefore, although there are differences in the influence of discourse elements in maternal input for ASD and TYP children, these elements are informative for both groups.