A Discrepancy in Comprehension and Production in Early Language Development in ASD: Is it Clinically Relevant?

Davidson, M. Meghan; Weismer, Susan Ellis

doi:10.1007/s10803-017-3135-z

Cited by 29 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…Given the atypical receptive-expressive vocabulary profile in children with ASD (Davidson & Ellis Weismer, 2017;Hudry et al, 2010;Kover et al, 2013), we suspect that the particular difficulty in the receptive-to-expressive generalization observed in this study reflects a unique difficulty in receptive vocabulary learning or reduced receptive advantage in children with ASD rather than a difference in task demands across expressive and receptive vocabulary learning. Previous studies on the discrepant receptive-expressive vocabulary profile in children with ASD have suggested that children with ASD may demonstrate focused impairments in receptive vocabulary learning because they benefit less from the ambient linguistic input in the environment and may require more supportive contexts to learn new words (McDaniel, Yoder, Woynaroski, & Watson, 2018;Woynaroski et al, 2016).…”

Section: Cross-modal Generalizationmentioning

confidence: 78%

Cross-modal generalization of receptive and expressive vocabulary in children with autism spectrum disorder

Castle

Camarata

2019

Autism & Developmental Language Impairments

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Background and aims: Word learning is an area that poses a particular challenge to children with autism spectrum disorder. A unique challenge for this population is generalization of learned skills across new learning contexts. In clinical settings, a common assumption in teaching vocabulary for children with autism spectrum disorder is that learning in one modality will generalize incidentally to untreated modalities, but very few studies have evaluated the validity of this assumption. The purpose of this study was to investigate receptive and expressive word acquisition and cross-modal generalization in children with autism spectrum disorder. Methods: A single-case parallel treatments design was used to compare word learning and cross-modal generalization in children with autism spectrum disorder. Ten children with autism spectrum disorder were taught unfamiliar vocabulary words in a combined storybook and play intervention. For each child, half of the target words were trained expressively and the other half were trained receptively by random assignment. No direct cross-modal instruction was delivered. A series of probe sessions were completed to assess participants' within-modal learning and cross-modal generalization of vocabulary learning. Results: All children learned target words in both receptive and expressive conditions, as evidenced by an average of 80% accuracy across three trials at the end of each intervention. Overall, cross-modal generalization was higher for the expressive-to-receptive direction than for the receptive-to expressive direction. Nine out of ten children demonstrated successful cross-modal generalization on the expressive-to-receptive probes and only three children demonstrated successful cross-modal generalization on the receptive-to-expressive probes. Large variability was observed with regard to number of intervention sessions needed to reach mastery criterion and there were individual patterns of word learning. Conclusion: Contrary to the assumption that vocabulary learning will be ''automatically'' generalized across modalities, results from this study indicate that cross-modal generalization at the word level is not automatic nor consistent in children with autism spectrum disorder, particularly in the receptive-to-expressive direction. Implications: The finding that more children demonstrated expressive-to-receptive generalization than the opposite direction suggests that targeting expressive vocabulary first with the goal of incidentally increasing receptive vocabulary may be more efficient than starting with the receptive modality. Additionally, the finding that not all children demonstrated successful expressive-to-receptive cross-modal generalization indicates that teaching vocabulary in the expressive modality exclusively does not guarantee receptive understanding in this population. We recommend that practitioners periodically monitor children's vocabulary learning in both modalities or set an explicit generalization goal to ensure complete learning of trained words.

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Section: Cross-modal Generalizationmentioning

confidence: 78%

Cross-modal generalization of receptive and expressive vocabulary in children with autism spectrum disorder

Castle

Camarata

2019

Autism & Developmental Language Impairments

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“…However, the deficit of language comprehension was not homogeneous, since receptive grammar was more impaired than receptive vocabulary. The above language profile differs from the one usually observed in children with a primary developmental language disorder, which is generally characterized by better receptive abilities as opposed to expressive language abilities [16,[44][45][46]. The discrepancy between receptive and expressive skills in children with ASD is, however, still a debated issue, because it is not clear whether it could be considered a specific marker of ASD.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…The majority of published studies report that, in ASD, receptive language is more impaired than expressive language [5,11,[16][17][18][19][20][21], but this finding has not been completely confirmed [22,23]. Moreover, the issue of the discrepancy between receptive and expressive competences is still unclear in terms of whether it should be considered as a possible marker of ASD, or whether both receptive and expressive language difficulties are comorbid to ASD.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grammatical Comprehension in Italian Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

et al. 2020

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Language deficits represent one of the most relevant factors that determine the clinical phenotype of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The main aim of the research was to study the grammatical comprehension of children with ASD. A sample of 70 well-diagnosed children (60 boys and 10 girls; aged 4.9–8 years) were prospectively recruited. The results showed that language comprehension is the most impaired language domain in ASD. These findings have important clinical implications, since the persistence of grammatical receptive deficits may have a negative impact on social, adaptive and learning achievements. As for the grammatical profiles, persistent difficulties were found during the school-age years in morphological and syntactic decoding in children with relatively preserved cognitive and expressive language skills. These data and the lack of a statistically significant correlation between the severity of ASD symptoms and language skills are in line with the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition) perspective that considers the socio-communication disorder as a nuclear feature of ASD and the language disorder as a specifier of the diagnosis and not as a secondary symptom anymore. The presence of receptive difficulties in school-age ASD children with relatively preserved non-verbal cognitive abilities provides important hints to establish rehabilitative treatments.

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“…Similarly, Hudry et al (2010) identified group differences in ASD severity for groups of children with ASD who did versus did not exhibit atypical receptiveexpressive profiles on the MB-CDI, but ASD severity did not predict receptive-expressive difference scores in the Kover et al (2013) sample. Mixed results are also evident for chronological age (Davidson & Ellis Weismer, 2017;Haebig & Sterling, 2017;Hudry et al, 2010;Kover et al, 2013;Kwok et al, 2015). None of these predictors are clearly malleable in children with ASD.…”

Section: Previously Investigated Predictors Of Receptive-expressive Dmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…n contrast to delayed language development, which follows the typical course but at a slower rate, deviant language development is characterized by patterns of skills not observed in typical development (Kamhi, 1998;Loeb & Leonard, 1991). An atypical discrepancy between receptive and expressive language skills exhibited by some children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is one manifestation of deviant language development (e.g., Davidson & Ellis Weismer, 2017;Hudry et al, 2010;Kim, Paul, Tager-Flusberg, & Lord, 2014;Luyster, Kadlec, Carter, & Tager-Flusberg, 2008). Correlates of the magnitude of receptive-expressive discrepancy patterns may provide insights into why language development in ASD deviates from typical language development.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Predicting Receptive–Expressive Vocabulary Discrepancies in Preschool Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

McDaniel

Yoder

Woynaroski

et al. 2018

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Findings support the hypothesis that variation in attention toward a speaker might partially explain receptive-expressive vocabulary size discrepancy magnitude in children with ASD. Results are consistent with an input-processing deficit explanation of language impairment in this clinical population. Future studies should test whether attention toward a speaker is malleable and causally related to receptive-expressive discrepancies in children with ASD.

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A Discrepancy in Comprehension and Production in Early Language Development in ASD: Is it Clinically Relevant?

Cited by 29 publications

References 56 publications

Cross-modal generalization of receptive and expressive vocabulary in children with autism spectrum disorder

Cross-modal generalization of receptive and expressive vocabulary in children with autism spectrum disorder

Grammatical Comprehension in Italian Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Predicting Receptive–Expressive Vocabulary Discrepancies in Preschool Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

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