Maternal and Paternal Speech to Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Background:  Parental speech directed to young children is crucial for many developmental reasons. For example, language is among the most immediate and relevant means parents have to convey both affect and information to children. Speech directed to children has been thoroughly investigated in typical development, and associations between parent speech and child language, social, and emotional development are prominent in the literature (Blount, 1990; Garton, 1992; Hampson & Nelson, 1993; Longobardi, 1992; Stern, 1985; Thiessen, Hill, & Saffran, 2005). However, the characteristics of parental speech to children with intellectual disabilities are far less well documented (cf. Longobardi, Caselli, & Colombini, 1998; Spiker, Boyce, & Boyce, 2002; de Falco et al. 2010). Generally, parents of children with intellectual disabilities are believed to adapt to their children’s mental and language level in a way believed to promote their children’s communication and attention skills (Legerstee & Fisher, 2008; Legerstee, Van Beek, & Varghese, 2002). In the area of developmental disabilities, father–child interaction has been much less investigated when compared to mother–child interaction (Girolametto, 1994; McConachie, 1989), and no recent studies have been conducted that involve children with ASD.

Objectives:  The aim of the present study is to investigate and compare maternal and paternal speech directed to young children with ASD. The study involves 15 mother-child dyads and 15 father-child dyads with children (age 3 to 5 years) with ASD. 

Methods:  The diagnosis of participants with ASD was confirmed through clinical judgment by an independent clinician based on DSM-IV criteria as well as through the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS - Lord, Rutter, DiLavore, & Risi, 2003). Mothers’ child-directed speech and father’ child-directed speech were recorded during a 10-min observation session of joint play interaction. Parents’ speech was coded from verbatim transcripts of parental use of language from the videos of parent–child interactions. Parental speech was categorized in terms of the primary function of each speech unit, using a coding scheme validated in previous studies of maternal speech that confirm its appropriateness across cultures (Bornstein et al., 1992; Rossi, 1998; Venuti et al., 1997). Three main categories are: (a) affect-salient speech—expressive, generally non-propositional, idiomatic, or meaningless statements language ( encouragement, discouragement, nonsense, greetings, mimic, onomatopoeia and conventions) and (b) information-salient speech—normally fully propositional statements that give or ask information about the child, the parent him/herself, or the environment. Subcategories of information-salient speech are also considered (direct statements, questions, or descriptions). A third class (c) of other parental speech included vocatives, speaking on behalf the dyad, the child or a toy, and a fourth included unintelligible utterances. These four classes are mutually exclusive and exhaustive. 

Results:  This functional analysis was applied by two independent coders. Data analyses showed that there are no quantitative differences between mothers and fathers of children with ASD regarding the three main categories and the subcategories of information-salient speech. 

Conclusions:  However, qualitative differences between mothers’ and fathers’ speech emerged.