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. 2025 Sep:80:102093.
doi: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102093. Epub 2025 Jun 19.

Caregiver broader autism phenotype does not moderate the effect of early caregiver-mediated support on infant language outcomes

Erin O'Connor  1 , Karli Treyvaud  2 , Cherie C Green  3 , Jonathan Green  4 , Teresa Iacono  5 , Murray Maybery  6 , Leonie Segal  7 , Vicky Slonims  8 , Kandice J Varcin  9 , Ming Wai Wan  10 , Andrew Whitehouse  11 , Kristelle Hudry  12
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Free article

Caregiver broader autism phenotype does not moderate the effect of early caregiver-mediated support on infant language outcomes

Erin O'Connor et al. Infant Behav Dev. 2025 Sep.
Free article

Abstract

Caregiver-mediated supports in general have shown mixed evidence for enhancing language outcomes in infants at higher likelihood of autism. While caregivers play a substantial role in caregiver-mediated supports, little is known about whether caregivers' own subclinical autistic features - known as broader autism phenotype (BAP) - may moderate infant language outcomes. In secondary analysis of trial data, we examined whether caregiver BAP moderated the effectiveness of the iBASIS caregiver-mediated support program (received when infants were mean aged 12-18 months) for infant language outcomes (measured on parent-reported and direct assessment of receptive and expressive language). While lower caregiver BAP was linked to increased parent-reported infant vocabulary growth in general terms, it did not actually moderate the effect of the caregiver-mediated support program on those infant language outcomes. In relative terms therefore, infants of caregivers with both higher and lower BAP benefited equally from this support on parent-report compared to the comparison group. Caregiver BAP is associated with slower vocabulary growth in infants, but caregivers with autistic features can be recommended for this caregiver-mediated video-feedback based program, as their infants benefitted from such support.

Keywords: Broader autism phenotype; Caregiver-mediated support; Higher likelihood of autism; Language development.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Co-Author (Ming Wai Wan) is a guest-editor for the journal to which this manuscript is submitted. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.