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. 2016 Mar;46(3):1013-24.
doi: 10.1007/s10803-015-2647-7.

Early Predictors of Growth in Diversity of Key Consonants Used in Communication in Initially Preverbal Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Tiffany Woynaroski  1 , Linda Watson  2 , Elizabeth Gardner  3 , Cassandra R Newsom  4 , Bahar Keceli-Kaysili  5 , Paul J Yoder  6
Affiliations

Early Predictors of Growth in Diversity of Key Consonants Used in Communication in Initially Preverbal Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Tiffany Woynaroski et al. J Autism Dev Disord. 2016 Mar.

Abstract

Diversity of key consonants used in communication (DKCC) is a value-added predictor of expressive language growth in initially preverbal children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Studying the predictors of DKCC growth in young children with ASD might inform treatment of this under-studied aspect of prelinguistic development. Eighty-seven initially preverbal preschoolers with ASD and their parents were observed at five measurement periods. In this longitudinal correlational investigation, we found that child intentional communication acts and parent linguistic responses to child leads predicted DKCC growth, after controlling for two other predictors and two background variables. As predicted, receptive vocabulary mediated the association between the value-added predictors and endpoint DKCC.

Keywords: Autism; Consonant inventory; Intentional communication; Parent linguistic responses; Predictors; Receptive vocabulary; Vocal communication.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Growth of diversity of key consonants used in communication (CSBS Subscale 11 weighted raw score) as a function of three values on the value-added predictors. The structural equation used to generate the illustrated trajectories was: eDKCC = −1.55-10(Time)+2.11(PLR)+9.71(COMM)+.13(TIME*PRL)+.33(TIME*COMM). In above formula, estimated DKCC is “eDKCC”, T5-centered time is “TIME,” parent linguistic responses is “PLR,” and intentional communication is “COMM.”
Figure 2
Figure 2
Results of simple mediation models for the value-added predictors of T5-centered intercept for the growth curve of DKCC (i.e., diversity of key consonants used in communication).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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