Does vocal contingency predict characteristics of speech in children with ASD (original) (raw)

2015

Abstract

For children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the ability to use speech to communicate by age 6 predicts a number of desirable outcomes in adulthood, including employment, social relationships, and behavioral health. We conducted this study to examine the utility of a novel measure – child vocal contingency – to predict spoken language in children with ASD. Child vocal contingency refers to the degree to which children’s speech-like vocalizations are contingent on the immediately preceding event being adult speech. The automated data collection and analysis made possible by Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA) lends particular value to child vocal contingency as a putative predictor variable by minimizing the resources required to use large quantities of audio data. Our hypotheses were that child vocal contingency would positively correlate with later expressive vocabulary, as well as with speech-likeness of vocalizations, response to joint attention, consonant inventory, attention to child-directed speech, and parental responsivity, all of which have been linked to language abilities in children with ASD. We analyzed daylong audio recordings obtained with LENA’s wearable recording equipment for 33 preschool-age minimally verbal participants with ASD, and used sequential analysis to quantify the contingency between adult and following child vocalizations in a way that ist independent from their base -rates. This process yielded an index of child vocal contingency for each participant. We conducted a generalizability study on the child vocal contingency index, showing that this variable reached a stable estimate within two daylong recording sessions. The audio data we analyzed included two daylong recordings per participant for 88% (n = 29) of participants; the remaining participants had only one recording available. There were no significant simple correlations between child vocal contingency and its hypothesized correlates. However, subsequent exploratory analysis revealed a significant concurrent correlation between child vocal contingency and speech-likeness of vocalizations that was moderated by motor imitation skills (R2-change = .325, p < .001). This might indicate that children with ASD who tend to both respond vocally to adult speech and imitate adult actions are able to use more speech-like vocalizations, a necessary component of communicative speech. Replication of this finding is needed.

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