Questioning, Directing, and Commenting: Parent-Child Talk in Autism

Background:  Parent-child interactions are an important influence on children’s language development.  Several studies have established that parents of children with autism interact with their children differently than parents of typically developing children (Kasari, Sigman, Mundy, & Yirmiya, 1988; Lemanek, Stone, & Fishel, 1993; Doussard-Roosevelt, Joe, Bazhenova, & Porges, 2003).  However, there has been less focus on how parents communicate with their children in relation to their child’s individual characteristics.  

Objectives:  The purpose of this study was to examine the association between parent language use and child’s baseline characteristics (i.e., receptive and expressive language abilities) in minimally verbal preschoolers diagnosed with ASD.

Methods:  This study is a secondary analysis of an ongoing randomized controlled trial targeting social communication in minimally verbal preschoolers (1R01 MH084864, Kasari, et al).  The sample consisted of 59 parent-child dyads from the greater Los Angeles area.  All children had a diagnosis of ASD and used less than 30 functional words across behavioral assessments.  Each parent-child dyad completed a 10-minute free play assessment using a standardized set of toys.  These videotaped assessments conducted prior to beginning the randomized controlled intervention study were frequency coded for the following types of parent language: 1) test questions, which have known answers; 2) directives, which are direct instructions to the child, and 3) comments, which include statements that convey information about events or objects within shared attentional focus.  Types of parent language were converted to proportions and were then analyzed for correlations with child’s baseline language abilities.

Results:  Overall, parents used a higher proportion of directives (41%) than comments (28%) and questions (19%).  Parent questions were associated with children who had higher baseline language skills from the Mullen Scales of Early Learning (receptive: r_s = .528, p < 0.05; expressive: r_s = .623, p < 0.05).  Conversely, parent directives were negatively correlated with child expressive language (r_s = -.337, p < 0.05).  Parent comments were not related with child language level; however, they were negatively correlated with parent directives (r_s= -.673, p < 0.05).  

Conclusions:  These results suggest that parent language use is related to child’s language ability.  As language is often an intervention target for minimally verbal children, understanding the baseline relationship between parent and child language may be important especially within the context of parent training.  Further research is warranted to determine if parent training will modify the proportions of parent talk and if parent comments will also be related to child language ability when provided with training.