1. Projects
  2. Language Development in Children with Autism
  3. Early Language Project

Early Language Project

We study language comprehension via Intermodal Preferential Looking (IPL). Children watch two side-by-side videos, and hear an audio that matches only one of the videos. We film the children’s eyes to see if they look longer at the video that matches what they hear. If they do, we infer that they understand—and have learned—the language in the audio. We have visited a group of children 6 times over the course of 2 years, assessing their language via comprehension, production, and standardized tests. We then carry out a ‘follow-up’ visit, 2 years later. Here are some of our findings:

Child performing IPL task

  • Intermodal preferential looking works with children with ASD!
    • Naigles, L.R. & Tovar, A.T. (2012) Portable Intermodal Preferential Looking (IPL): Investigating Language Comprehension in Typically Developing Toddlers and Young Children with Autism. Journal of Visualized Experiments (70), e4331, doi:10.3791/4331.
    • Piotroski, J. & Naigles, L. (2012) Preferential Looking. In E. Hoff (Ed.) Guide to Research Methods in Child Language (pp. 17-28). Wiley-Blackwell.
  • They have demonstrated “comprehension before production”, showing that they are processing language ‘off-line’, with SVO word order, with wh-questions, and with tense/aspect markers
    • Tovar, A., Fein, D., & Naigles, L. (2015) Grammatical Aspect Is a Strength in the Language Comprehension of Young Children with Autism. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research 58, 301-310. doi:10.1044/2014.
    • Goodwin, A., Fein, D., & Naigles, L. (2012) Comprehension of wh-questions precedes their production in typical development and autism spectrum disorders. Autism Research 5: 109-123.
    • Swensen, L., Kelley, E., Fein, D., & Naigles, L. (2007) Processes of Language Acquisition in Children With Autism: Evidence from Preferential Looking. Child Development 78, 542-557.
  • They can use some lexical strategies and principles (noun bias, syntactic bootstrapping) to figure out what words mean, but have yet to demonstrate a shape bias
    • Potrzeba, E., Fein, D., & Naigles, L. (2015) Investigating the shape bias in typically developing children and children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. Frontiers in Psychology: Cognition.
    • Tek, S., Jaffery, R., Meade, L., Fein, D., & Naigles, L.R. (2012) The shape bias is affected by differing visual contrast among objects. Cognitive Development 27, 28-38.
    • Naigles, L., Kelty, E., Jaffery, R. & Fein, D. (2011) Abstractness and Continuity in the Syntactic Development of Young Children with Autism. Autism Research 4: 422-437.
    • Tek, S., Jaffery, G., Fein, D., & Naigles, L.R. (2008) Do Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders Show a Shape Bias in Word Learning? Autism Research 1, 202-215.
    • Swensen, L., Kelley, E., Fein, D., & Naigles, L. (2007) Processes of Language Acquisition in Children With Autism: Evidence from Preferential Looking. Child Development 78, 542-557.
  • They are able to extract regularities and patterns in speech directed to them, outside of therapy
    • Goodwin, A., Fein, D., & Naigles, L. (2015) The role of maternal input in the development of wh-question comprehension in autism and typical development. Journal of Child Language 42, 32-63.
    • Naigles, L. (2013) Input and language development in children with autism. Seminars in Speech and Language (Special issue on Child language input and interaction: Key concepts for the speech-language pathologist) 34 (4), 237-248.
    • Swensen, L.D., Naigles, L.R., & Fein, D. (2007) Does Maternal Input Affect the Language of Children with Autism? BUCLD 31: Proceedings of the 31st annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 609-619).
  • More detailed analyses are revealing that the children in our sample are very heterogeneous, as far as language goes. Some children have acquired language at rates close to that of typical children while other children have progressed more slowly/demonstrated more struggles
    • Naigles, L.R. & Chin, I. (2015) Language development in children with autism. In E. Bavin & L. Naigles (Eds.) Cambridge Handbook of Child Language, 2nd (pp. 637-658). Cambridge: CUP.
    • Kelty-Stephen, E., Tek, S., Fein, D., & Naigles, L. (2014). Specific effects of joint attention on language development in children with autism spectrum disorders. In W. Orman & M. Valleau (Eds.) Proceedings of the 38th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 205-215). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
    • Tek, S., Mesite, L., Fein, D., & Naigles, L.R. (2014) Longitudinal Analyses of Expressive Language Development Reveal Two Distinct Language Profiles among Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 44, 75-89.