Jean Quigley School of Psychology Trinity College Dublin

Project Mother’s Infant Directed Speech (IDS) in face-toface interaction with typically developing infants and infant siblings (SIBS-A) of children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder, aged 3 to 12 months. Funded by IRCHSS

Mother-Infant Interaction � Eye-contact; Contingent Reactivity; Maternal Infant Directed Speech (IDS) ‘motherese’ � Critically � 4 important for infant development main functions: ◦ communication of affect; ◦ facilitation of social interaction through infant preference; ◦ engaging and maintaining infant attention; ◦ facilitation of language acquisition.

� Critical importance of speech addressed to infants during the preverbal period is well established. � The properties of that input are known to have important & specific effects on language development. � Mother’s vocal/verbal input & imitation rates are predictive of later language development in both typically & atypically developing children. � Yet little is known about the input received in this early pre-verbal stage before 12 months.

Maternal language in interaction Mother’s style of interaction (e. g. , informative or affective) shapes infant responsiveness ◦ strengthens either phonetic or prosodic qualities of infant’s vocalisations ◦ impacts on frequency, complexity & intensity of infant vocalisations Equally, mothers’ style of interaction may have developed in response to infants’ particular characteristics

� In the context of mother-infant interaction, throughout 1 st year, many critical precursors of socio-communication & language development develop ◦ joint attention, pointing, looking behaviours, . . . Behaviours often missing or impaired in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

Pre-linguistic period in ASD � Autistic infants can experience some deficits in their linguistic environment � Parents report a lack/low rates of social initiatives and responsive behaviours from autistic infant, particularly toward the end of the first year � This affords parents less opportunities for responsiveness, tend to increase their solicitation behaviours

Brief description � Prospective Video Analysis design: 18 mother-infant dyads (10 normally developing infants, 9 infant siblings of children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder ASD) filmed every 4 weeks between the ages of 3 and 12 months during in-home face-to-face interaction. � One TD infant and 4 HR infants subsequently diagnosed with ASD.

Why infant siblings? � ASD is a highly heritable neurodevelopmental condition � Familial recurrence risk of 18. 7% reported � Evidence of early difference in at-risk infants as well as in autistic children � Possible that a pattern of ‘disrupted’ interaction present between infant siblings of children with autism and their mothers. � Babysibs worldwide consortiums

� Not that much known about the mothers of atrisk infants and the extent to which her behaviour is influenced by: ◦ Interactions with the infants’ older autistic sibling(s); ◦ Risk-status: expectations/anxieties about the infant; ◦ The infant’s own patterns of initiating, attending and responding behaviour. � These infant siblings, at risk of developing a behaviourally-defined disorder characterised by socio-communicative impairments difficult to reliably diagnose before 18 months, present particular challenges for parents in interaction.

Microanalysis All speech & vocalisations transcribed (mothers >15, 000 utterances) & analysed Used Observer XT software to analyze and code mother-infant interaction ◦ ◦ ◦ facial expression all vocalisations eye gaze/looking behaviour joint attention behaviours … for each dyad over the course of the first year.

Aims and Objectives To compare maternal speech characteristics in face-to-face interaction with infants at high and low-risk for autism and to investigate if risk status affects the composition and complexity of maternal speech. To investigate the development of a set of behaviours and responses identified as critical to language acquisition (BSID-III, ESCS, Still-Face procedure).

Functional analysis of IDS What is known: Mothers of children with ASD (compared to mothers of TD/DD children): � � � � lower rates of sensitive responding refer more to themselves name their children more often use more directives pose less questions use more high-intensity approach behaviours more prompts, both verbal and non-verbal, to get the child’s attention Mother’s conversational style - not the cause of the infant’s difficulties but parental behaviour has been shown to predict development of autistic children’s communicative development & is an important factor to consider. DEVELOPMENTAL CASCADE

Outcomes? Little consensus on associated outcomes, in particular in the case of ASD. � � e. g. , frequent redirection and solicitation rather than following of the infant’s focus of attention has been shown to hinder language acquisition in TD children and to demand a shifting of attention that is difficult for ASD children but in early months, infants have also been shown to benefit from directive structuring of their play Kasari (2012) pointing and gestures that direct the child’s attention had long-term beneficial effects on language development in autistic preschoolers � Johnson (2010) reported that maternal persistence in relation to engaging the autistic infant’s attention seemed to promote joint attention development

Results of pragmatic/functional analysis � More attention solicitations � More questions but clarification type (like fathers? ) � Less contingently responsive � Less names & labels � Less affirmatives & criticism/negatives � Result of a less active, responsive infant?

Grammatical Analysis: Similarities between groups � Density: mean WPM & utterance rate � Non-meaningful speech & vocalisations, 10 -13% of all maternal input. � Verb tokens as proportion of total words, 17 -20%. � Noun tokens as proportion of total words, 21%. � Interrogatives 7 -31%, not sig. between groups. � Modifiers very restricted at 3%. � 50% of all clauses in present or progressive tense for both groups; only 5% past tense. � Copula is main verb in 15 -20% of all utterances.

Differences between groups � MLU sig. lower for high-risk group, p<. 05. � Total word types sig. lower for high-risk group, p<. 01. � VOCD sig. lower for high-risk group, p<. 05. � Different verb types sig. lower for high-risk, p<. 001. � Different noun types sig. lower for high-risk group, p<. 05. � Zero clause utterances sig. higher for high-risk group, up to 80% of total input, p<. 001. � Use of infant’s name in isolation sig. higher for high-risk group, p<. 05.

Maternal response patterns to infant vocalisations � � � Mothers selectively respond to and imitate infant vocalisations Infants make use of this contingent social feedback to shape their babbling. At both 12 & 18 months, HR infants produced proportionately more, developmentally less complex, vocalisations than the LR controls. HR mothers in turn were differently responsive to the speech-like quality of the vocalisations produced by their infant when compared with LR mothers at 18 months. HR mothers also imitated their infants’ vocalisations more frequently than the LR mothers. HR mothers may be implementing strategies of particular benefit as evidenced in some aspects of the infants’ language and cognitive outcome measures.

Conclusions � � � Difficult to reliably and robustly identify behavioural markers at either individual or group level for autism before 12 or even 18 months. Parental report is crucial. May also be productive to try to locate markers in the adaptive responsive behaviour of the adults who interact with these infants continually. By analysing those intuitive, non-conscious aspects of parenting that are nonetheless critical for development we may be able, together with the red flag behaviours identified in the infants themselves, to use maternal behaviours in interaction to help identify dyads at-risk in a bid to intervene as early as possible. Ask concerned parents about their style of interaction with their infant, specifically with regard to a hyper-stimulating style, which is proposed is a response to an under-active infant. It may well be that the mother who feels something is wrong is basing this intuition on her own behaviour with the infant, rather than on any specific behaviour manifested by the child, or in response to a lack or depressed rate of certain expected behaviours and initiatives.

� � � 2 nd aim: to analyse relationship between maternal IDS functional style and infants’ cognitive, language and sociocommunicative development with a view to assessing the predictive validity of maternal speech functions for infant outcomes. Few associations: increased incidence of attentionsolicitations addressed to the high-risk infants is not in fact having a detrimental effect on developmental outcomes as it appears to have for the LR infants and may therefore have a place in intervention and training programmes. Reinforces need for fine-grained contextual analyses before concluding that any particular style of interaction or IDS is inherently negative or beneficial in its effects

� � Only LR mothers’ responsive speech was positively associated with overall language scores aged 12 months, particularly with receptive language, and with initiating joint attention at 12 months. However we interpret this association as a further reflection that the LR infants are more active and engaged and so are provoking more responsive speech from the mother rather than the mother’s speech producing better outcomes for the infant. Delays in infant gesture and speech could alter the input infants receive leading to potential cascading effects on language development. It is not the mothers’ usage of particular speech acts that facilitates language but rather language development is facilitated only when the child is actively engaged during the utterance.

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