Language Acquisition and Communicative Development in Mandarin-Learning Preschool Children with ASD: Assessment Via the Pcdi-Infant Form

Background:  English-learning preschool children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have often been reported to demonstrate the severe delay of receptive and expressive vocabulary and non-verbal communication, functional object use and play skills (Charman et al., 2003; Luyster et al., 2007). Recent research has begun to delineate expressive language profiles in Mandarin-learning children with ASD (Su et al., 2016). However, little is known about both receptive and expressive, and non-verbal language profiles of Mandarin-learning preschool children with ASD.

Objectives:  Using the Putonghua Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Gestures (PCDI-Infant Form; Tardif et al., 2008), this study attempts to investigate the early development of understanding of phrases, words comprehension and expression, and production of gestures in Mandarin-learning preschool children with ASD.

Methods:  Parents of 75 2-6-year-old children with ASD (66 boys and 9 girls, mean age=54.52±14.40 months) completed the PCDI-Infant Form. Language and communicative abilities were compared with the published norms of typically-developing (TD) infants and the published patterns of English-learning preschool children with ASD respectively.

Results:  (1) Compared with the published norms of TD infants, the results indicated that Mandarin-learning preschool children with ASD demonstrated the following differences: ①The serious delay in early language development (in domains including First Signs of Understanding, Phrases, Starting to Talk, Vocabulary, Actions and Gestures); ②The considerable variability in language acquisition; ③For the “Vocabulary” part, their impairments of receptive language seemed to be severer than expressive language; ④In the gestural domain, their early gestures (12/27 points) were more impaired than late gestures (17/27 points); ⑤For correlations, results showed an overall significant correlation even with age partialled out (ps<.001). There were also strong correlations between vocabulary production and gesture production (r=.537 and r=.542 respectively, both ps<.001), and phrases understood (r=.574 and r=.574 respectively, both ps<.001), while both showed weak correlations in the published norms of TD infants (r=.41, p<.05 and r=.29, p>.05 respectively). (2) Compared with English-learning preschool children with ASD, the results indicated the similar developmental patterns: ①The serious delay in early language acquisition and communicative development were demonstrated across languages; ②Gesture production acting as a “bridge” between language comprehension and language production, as these three domains were significantly correlated with each other (ps<.001); ③When the participants were divided into 3 age subgroups (2-3-year-olds, 4-year-olds, 5-year-olds and above), results showed insignificant difference of age between the subcategories of the PCDI-Infant Form (ps>.05), different from the results of English studies.

Conclusions:  Mandarin-learning preschool children with ASD have demonstrated sever impairments in both receptive and expressive, and non-verbal language development. The serious delay compared with the published norms of TD infants highlighted the importance of timely and effective language intervention. While compared with English-learning preschool children with ASD, the patterns of early language acquisition and communicative development demonstrated similarities across languages. Additionally, we conjectured that the reason of no apparent age effect may result from the severer impairments in Mandarin-Learning preschool children with ASD. These findings in general corroborate the early language and communication profiles reported in English-learning preschool children with ASD.