Abstract
Background: In early typical language development, children understand words before they are able to use them in speech. Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) generally show impairments in both the comprehension and the production of language. However, the relative degree of delay or impairment in each of these sub-domains may also be atypical and remains less well-understood.
Aims: Relative delay in receptive and expressive language skills was examined within a large sample of preschoolers with autism. Children's language abilities varied from pre-verbal to fluent speech.
Method & Procedures: Scores on one direct clinician assessment and two parent-report measures of language were obtained for 152 preschoolers with core autism.
Outcomes & Results: As expected, on average, the language ability of the children with autism was lower than typical age norms, albeit with substantial individual variability. On all three language measures, receptive ability was relatively more impaired than expressive ability. Higher non-verbal ability was associated with such an atypical language profile.
Conclusions & Implications: Recognition of the marked receptive language impairment relative to expressive language, found to affect at least one-third of preschoolers with autism in this sample, has important implications for interacting with these children and for informing appropriate targets in language and communication intervention.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the parents and children for their participation in this study, Rhiannon Luyster for sharing raw data from her sample of children with broader ASD diagnoses, and the following people for their assistance with data collection; Laura Blazey, Laura Brown, Nicola Burton, Sally Clifford, Mary-Jo Doyle, Kathryn Frame, Clare Holt, and Anita Mehay. This study was funded by a UK Medical Research Council Grant to the Principal Investigators of the PACT Consortium (e-mail: www.medicine.manchester.ac.uk/pact/).
PACT consortium: University of Manchester - Jonathan Green (Chief Investigator), Andrew Pickles, Wendy MacDonald, Lydia White, Clare Holt, Dharmi Kapadia, Katy Bourne, Laura Blazey Stockport PCT - Tori Houghton, Carol Taylor Newcastle University - Ann Le Couteur, Anna Cutress, Sue Leach North Tyneside PCT - Sam Barron, Ruth Colmer, Sarah Randles Southwark PCT - Karen Beggs Lewisham PCT - Julia Collino King's College London - Barbara Barrett, Sarah Byford.
Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.
Notes
1. These data are presented in along with data from the current sample.
2. Similar analysis of PLS and VABS scores also indicated around 20% of the sample to demonstrate an atypical relative receptive/expressive language pattern. However, these data were less readily interpretable than those based on the MCDI raw vocabulary counts. As such, only the latter were retained for more detailed analysis and reporting.
3. The same broad pattern of results (in subgroup mean comparisons and predictors within a logistic regression) held when children were grouped for language typicality/atypicality according to the more liberal classification of falling within/outside of the 75th percentile (Fenson et al. Citation1994) of typical receptive and expressive vocabulary association.