Does Gestural Communication Influence Later Spoken Language Ability in Minimally Verbal Autistic Children?

Purpose: The current study examined the predictive role of gestures and gesture-speech combinations on later spoken language outcomes in minimally verbal (MV) autistic children enrolled in a blended naturalistic developmental/behavioral intervention (Joint Attention, Symbolic Play, Engagement, and Regulation [JASPER] + Enhanced Milieu Teaching [EMT]).

Method: Participants were 50 MV autistic children (40 boys), ages 54-105 months ( = 75.54, = 16.

NFTracer: Tracing NFT Impact Dynamics in Transaction-flow Substitutive Systems with Visual Analytics.

Impact dynamics are crucial for estimating the growth patterns of NFT projects by tracking the diffusion and decay of their relative appeal among stakeholders. Machine learning methods for impact dynamics analysis are incomprehensible and rigid in terms of their interpretability and transparency, whilst stakeholders require interactive tools for informed decision-making. Nevertheless, developing such a tool is challenging due to the substantial, heterogeneous NFT transaction data and the requirements for flexible, customized interactions.

Are minimally verbal autistic children's modality and form of communication associated with parent responsivity?

Prior work examined how minimally verbal (MV) children with autism used their gestural communication during social interactions. However, interactions are exchanges between social partners. Examining parent-child social interactions is critically important given the influence of parent responsivity on children's communicative development.

Real-time coded measures in natural language samples capture change over time in minimally verbal autistic children.

Prior research supports the use of natural language sampling (NLS) to assess the rate of speech utterances (URate) and the rate of conversational turns (CTRate) in minimally verbal (MV) autistic children. Bypassing time-consuming transcription, previous work demonstrated the ability to derive URate and CTRate using real-time coding methods and provided support for their strong psychometric properties. (1) Unexplored is how URate and CTRate using real-time coding methods capture change over time and (2) whether specific child factors predict changes in URate and CTRate in 50 MV autistic children (40 males; M = 75.

Studies assessing domains pertaining to structural language in autism vary in reporting practices and approaches to assessment: A systematic review.

Under the (5th ed.), language impairment can co-occur with autism. It is not yet clear how research defines, reports, and characterizes structural language abilities of autistic individuals eligible for school-based special education services (aged 3-21 years) in the United States.

Studies pertaining to language impairment in school-age autistic individuals underreport participant socio-demographics: A systematic review.

Although exclusion of racially and ethnically minoritized autistic individuals from research is a long-standing issue, we have yet to determine how exclusion impacts areas of autism research important for identifying language impairment. Diagnosis depends on the quality of the evidence (i.e.

Developmental language disorder in Chinese children: A systematic review of research from 1997 to 2022.

Developmental language disorder (DLD) is one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders. The influences of DLD on language development have been delineated in detail in English. The same is not true for Chinese, a group of Sinitic languages with distinct typological features that may modify the profile of DLD crosslinguistically.

Lexical and Morphosyntactic Profiles of Autistic Youth With Minimal or Low Spoken Language Skills.

Purpose: Autistic youth who are minimally or low verbal are underrepresented in research leaving little to no evidence base for supporting them and their families. To date, few studies have examined the types of words and word combinations these individuals use. The purpose of this study was to take a strengths-based approach to outline descriptive profiles of autistic youth who use few words and elucidate the lexical and morphosyntactic features of their spoken language.

Ganong effects for frequency may not be robust.

The Ganong effect-more identifications of a certain phoneme in a context where that phoneme would yield a real word than a context where that phoneme would yield a pseudoword-has been widely replicated. Few studies, however, have tested whether this effect occurs for frequency contrasts. In the present study, participants' likelihood of identifying an ambiguous sound as aspirated was tested in acoustically identical continua in contexts where the identification of the sound as aspirated would either yield a lower- or higher-frequency word than the identification of the sound as unaspirated would.