Abstract
Human infants show a robust preference for speech over many other sounds, helping them learn language and interact with others. Lacking a preference for speech may underlie some language and social-pragmatic difficulties in children with ASD. But, it’s unclear how an early speech preference supports later language and social-pragmatic abilities. We show that across infants displaying and not displaying later ASD symptoms, a greater speech preference at 9 months is related to increased attention to a person when they speak at 12 months, and better expressive language at 24 months, but is not related to later social-pragmatic attention or outcomes. Understanding how an early speech preference supports language outcomes could inform targeted and individualized interventions for children with ASD.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-5®). Arlington, VA: APA
Balaban, M. T., & Waxman, S. R. (1997). Do words facilitate object categorization in 9-month-old infants? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 64(1), 3–26. https://doi.org/10.1006/jecp.1996.2332.
Butterfield, E. C., & Siperstein, G. N. (1970). Influence of contingent auditory stimulation upon nonnutritional suckle. In J. F. Bosma (Ed.), Third symposium on oral sensation and perception: The mouth of the infant (pp. 313–334). Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.
Center for Disease Control and Prevention. (2018). Prevalence of autism spectrum disorder among children aged 8 years—Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, 11 Sites, United States, 2014.
Chawarska, K., Macari, S., & Shic, F. (2012). Context modulates attention to social scenes in toddlers with autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 53(8), 903–913. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2012.02538.x.
Chawarska, K., Macari, S., & Shic, F. (2013). Decreased spontaneous attention to social scenes in 6-month-old infants later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders. Biological Psychiatry, 74(3), 195–203. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2012.11.022.
Cheung, H., Xiao, W., & Lai, C. M. (2012). Twelve-month-olds’ understanding of intention transfer through communication. PLoS ONE, 7(9), e46168. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0046168.
Cohen, P. (2008). Applied data analytic techniques for turning points research. New York: Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
Colombo, J., & Bundy, R. S. (1981). A method for the measurement of infant auditory selectivity. Infant Behavior and Development, 4(1), 219–223. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0163-6383(81)80025-2.
Cooper, R. P., & Aslin, R. N. (1990). Preference for infant-directed speech in the first month after birth. Child Development, 61(5), 1584–1595. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.1990.tb02885.x.
Cooper, R. P., & Aslin, R. N. (1994). Developmental differences in infant attention to the spectral properties of infant-directed speech. Child Development, 65(6), 1663–1677. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.1994.tb00841.x.
Csibra, G., & Gergely, G. (2009). Natural pedagogy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13(4), 148–153. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2009.01.005.
Csibra, G., & Gergely, G. (2011). Natural pedagogy as evolutionary adaptation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 366(1567), 1149–1157. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2010.0319.
Cudeck, R., & Klebe, K. J. (2002). Multiphase mixed-effects models for repeated measures data. Psychological Methods, 7(1), 41–63. https://doi.org/10.1037//1082-989X.7.1.41.
Curtin, S., & Vouloumanos, A. (2013). Speech preference is associated with autistic-like behavior in 18-months-olds at risk for autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 43(9), 2114–2120. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-013-1759-1.
Dehaene-Lambertz, G. (2000). Cerebral specialization for speech and non-speech stimuli in infants. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 12(3), 449–460. https://doi.org/10.1162/089892900562264.
Dehaene-Lambertz, G., Dehaene, S., & Hertz-Pannier, L. (2002). Functional neuroimaging of speech perception in infants. Science, 298(5600), 2013–2015. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1077066.
Esler, A. N., Bal, V. H., Guthrie, W., Wetherby, A., Weismer, S. E., & Lord, C. (2015). The Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, Toddler Module: Standardized Severity Scores. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 45(9), 2704–2720. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-015-2432-7.
Faul, F., Erdfelder, E., Lang, A. G., & Buchner, A. (2007). G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behavior Research Methods, 39(2), 175–191. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193146.
Fenson, L., Bates, E., Dale, P. S., Marchman, V. A., Reznick, J. S., & Thal, D. J. (1993). MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories: User’s guide and technical manual. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.
Ferry, A. L., Hespos, S. J., & Waxman, S. R. (2010). Categorization in 3- and 4-month-old infants: An advantage of words over tones. Child Development, 81(2), 472–479. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01408.x.
Fulkerson, A. L., & Waxman, S. R. (2007). Words (but not Tones) facilitate object categorization: Evidence from 6- and 12-month-olds. Cognition, 105(1), 218–228. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2006.09.005.
Gillespie-Lynch, K., Sepeta, L., Wang, Y., Marshall, S., Gomez, L., Sigman, M., & Hutman, T. (2012). Early childhood predictors of the social competence of adults with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 42(2), 161–174. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-011-1222-0.
Guthrie, W., Swineford, L. B., Nottke, C., & Wetherby, A. M. (2013). Early diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder: Stability and change in clinical diagnosis and symptom presentation. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 54(5), 582–590. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12008.
IBM Corp. (2017). IBM SPSS statistics for Mac, Version 25.0. Armonk, NY: IBM.
Jones, W., & Klin, A. (2013). Attention to eyes is present but in decline in 2–6-month-old infants later diagnosed with autism. Nature, 504(7480), 427–431. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12715.
Klin, A. (1991). Young autistic children’s listening preferences in regard to speech: A possible characterization of the symptom of social withdrawal. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 21(1), 29–42. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02206995.
Klin, A. (1992). Listening preferences in regard to speech in four children with developmental disabilities. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 33(4), 763–769. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.1992.tb00911.x.
Koo, T. K., & Li, M. Y. (2016). A guideline of selecting and reporting intraclass correlation coefficients for reliability research. Journal of Chiropractic Medicine, 15(2), 155–163. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcm.2016.02.012.
Kuhl, P. K., Coffey-Corina, S., Padden, D., & Dawson, G. (2005). Links between social and linguistic processing of speech in preschool children with autism: Behavioral and electrophysiological measures. Developmental Science, 8(1), F1–F12. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2004.00384.x.
Lawrence, M. A. (2016). ez: Easy analysis and visualization of factorial experiments. R package version 4.4-0. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=ez.
Little, R., & Rublin, D. (1987). Statistical analysis with missing data (p. 381). New York.: Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119013563.
Luyster, R. J., Gotham, K., Guthrie, W., Coffing, M., Petrak, R., Pierce, K., … Lord, C. (2009). The autism diagnostic observation schedule—Toddler module: A new module of a standardized diagnostic measure for autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 39(9), 1305–1320. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-009-0746-z.
Mackenzie, H., Graham, S. A., & Curtin, S. (2011). Twelve-month-olds privilege words over other linguistic sounds in an associative learning task. Developmental Science, 14(2), 249–255. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2010.00975.x.
Magiati, I., Tay, X. W., & Howlin, P. (2014). Cognitive, language, social and behavioural outcomes in adults with autism spectrum disorders: A systematic review of longitudinal follow-up studies in adulthood. Clinical Psychology Review. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2013.11.002.
Marchman, V. A. (2013). Scoring Program for the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories. Retrieved from https://mb-cdi.stanford.edu/scoringdb_p.htm.
Martin, A., Onishi, K. H., & Vouloumanos, A. (2012). Understanding the abstract role of speech in communication at 12months. Cognition, 123(1), 50–60. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2011.12.003.
Moore, C., & Corkum, V. (1998). Infant gaze following based on eye direction. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 16(4), 495–503. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-835X.1998.tb00767.x.
Mullen, E. M. (1995). Mullen Scales of Early Learning. Circle Piens, MN: American Guidance Services, Inc. (AGS ed.).
Oakes, L. M. (2010). Infancy guidelines for publishing eye-tracking data. Infancy, 15(1), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1532-7078.2010.00030.x.
Ozonoff, S., Young, G. S., Carter, A., Messinger, D., Yirmiya, N., Zwaigenbaum, L., … Stone, W. L. (2011). Recurrence risk for autism spectrum disorders: A Baby Siblings Research Consortium study. Pediatrics, 128(3), e488–e495. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2010-2825.
Pascalis, O., de Haan, M., Nelson, C. A., & de Schonen, S. (1998). Long-term recognition memory for faces assessed by visual paired comparison in 3- and 6-month-old infants. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 24(1), 249–260. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.24.1.249.
Peña, M., Maki, A., Kovacic, D., Dehaene-Lambertz, G., Koizumi, H., Bouquet, F., & Mehler, J. (2003). Sounds and silence: An optical topography study of language recognition at birth. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 100(20), 11702–11705. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1934290100.
Pfister, R., Schwarz, K., Carson, R., & Jancyzk, M. (2013). Easy methods for extracting individual regression slopes: Comparing SPSS, R, and Excel. Tutorials in Quantitative Methods for Psychology, 9(2), 72–78.
R Core Team. (2013). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing.
Rosander, K., & von Hofsten, C. (2011). Predictive gaze shifts elicited during observed and performed actions in 10-month-old infants and adults. Neuropsychologia, 49(10), 2911–2917. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.06.018.
Samples, J. M., & Franklin, B. (1978). Behavioral responses in 7 to 9 month old infants to speech and non-speech stimuli. Journal of Auditory Research, 18(2), 115–123.
Scaife, M., & Bruner, J. S. (1975). The capacity for joint visual attention in the infant. Nature, 253(5489), 265–266. https://doi.org/10.1038/253265a0.
Shrout, P. E., & Fleiss, J. L. (1979). Intraclass correlations: Uses in assessing rater reliability. Psychological Bulletin, 86(2), 420–428. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.86.2.420.
Shultz, S., & Vouloumanos, A. (2010). Three-month-olds prefer speech to other naturally occurring signals. Language Learning and Development, 6(4), 241–257. https://doi.org/10.1080/15475440903507830.
Shultz, S., Vouloumanos, A., Bennett, R. H., & Pelphrey, K. (2014). Neural specialization for speech in the first months of life. Developmental Science, 17(5), 766–774. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12151.
Spence, M. J., & DeCasper, A. J. (1987). Prenatal experience with low-frequency maternal-voice sounds influence neonatal perception of maternal voice samples. Infant Behavior and Development, 10(2), 133–142. https://doi.org/10.1016/0163-6383(87)90028-2.
Sterne, J. A. C., White, I. R., Carlin, J. B., Spratt, M., Royston, P., Kenward, M. G., … Carpenter, J. R. (2009). Multiple imputation for missing data in epidemiological and clinical research: Potential and pitfalls. BMJ, 338, b2393. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.b2393.
Tenenbaum, E. J., Sobel, D. M., Sheinkopf, S. J., Shah, R. J., Malle, B. F., & Morgan, J. L. (2015). Attention to the mouth and gaze following in infancy predict language development. Journal of Child Language, 42(6), 1173–1190. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000914000725.
Thorgrimsson, G. B., Fawcett, C., & Liszkowski, U. (2014). Infants’ expectations about gestures and actions in third-party interactions. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 321. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00321.
Thorgrimsson, G. B., Fawcett, C., & Liszkowski, U. (2015). 1- and 2-year-olds’ expectations about third-party communicative actions. Infant Behavior and Development, 39, 53–66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2015.02.002.
Tronick, E. Z. (1989). Emotions and emotional communication in infants. American Psychologist, 44(2), 112–119. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.44.2.112.
Vivanti, G., Hocking, D. R., Fanning, P., & Dissanayake, C. (2016). Social affiliation motives modulate spontaneous learning in Williams syndrome but not in autism. Molecular Autism, 7(1), 40. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13229-016-0101-0.
Vouloumanos, A. (2018). Voulez-vous jouer avec moi? Twelve-month-olds understand that foreign languages can communicate. Cognition, 173, 87–92. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2018.01.002.
Vouloumanos, A., & Curtin, S. (2014). Foundational tuning: How infants’ attention to speech predicts language development. Cognitive Science, 38(8), 1675–1686. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12128.
Vouloumanos, A., Druhen, M. J., Hauser, M. D., & Huizink, A. T. (2009). Five-month-old infants’ identification of the sources of vocalizations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 106(44), 18867–18872. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0906049106.
Vouloumanos, A., Hauser, M. D., Werker, J. F., & Martin, A. (2010). The tuning of human neonates’ preference for speech. Child Development, 81, 517–527.
Vouloumanos, A., Kiehl, K. A., Werker, J. F., & Liddle, P. F. (2001). Detection of sounds in the auditory stream: Event-related fMRI evidence for differential activation to speech and nonspeech. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 13(7), 994–1005. https://doi.org/10.1162/089892901753165890.
Vouloumanos, A., Martin, A., & Onishi, K. H. (2014). Do 6-month-olds understand that speech can communicate? Developmental Science, 17(6), 872–879. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12170.
Vouloumanos, A., & Waxman, S. R. (2014). Listen up! Speech is for thinking during infancy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 18(12), 642–646. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2014.10.001.
Vouloumanos, A., & Werker, J. F. (2004). Tuned to the signal: The privileged status of speech for young infants. Developmental Science, 73, 270–276.
Vouloumanos, A., & Werker, J. F. (2007). Listening to language at birth: Evidence for a bias for speech in neonates. Developmental Science. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2007.00549.x.
Wickham, H. (2009). ggplot2: Elegant graphics for data analysis. New York: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-98141-3.
Wodka, E. L., Mathy, P., & Kalb, L. (2013). Predictors of phrase and fluent speech in children with autism and severe language delay. Pediatrics, 131(4), e1128–e1134.
Xu, F. (2002). The role of language in acquiring object kind concepts in infancy. Cognition, 85(3), 223–250. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(02)00109-9.
Xu, F., Cote, M., & Baker, A. (2005). Labeling guides object individuation in 12-month-old infants. Psychological Science, 16(5), 372–377. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0956-7976.2005.01543.x.
Yamashiro, A., & Vouloumanos, A. (2018). How do infants and adults process communicative events in real time? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 173, 268–283. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2018.04.011.
Yamashiro, A., & Vouloumanos, A. (2019). Are linguistic and social-pragmatic attention separable in neurotypical infants and infants later diagnosed with ASD? Developmental Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000676.
Young, G. S., Merin, N., Rogers, S. J., & Ozonoff, S. (2009). Gaze behavior and affect at 6 months: Predicting clinical outcomes and language development in typically developing infants and infants at risk for autism. Developmental Science, 12(5), 798–814. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2009.00833.x.
Zwaigenbaum, L., Bryson, S., & Garon, N. (2013). Early identification of autism spectrum disorders. Behavioural Brain Research, 251, 133–146. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbr.2013.04.004.
Zwaigenbaum, L., Thurm, A., Stone, W., Baranek, G., Bryson, S., Iverson, J., … Sigman, M. (2007). Studying the emergence of autism spectrum disorders in high-risk infants: Methodological and practical issues. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-006-0179-x.
Acknowledgments
We’d like to thank members of the NYU Infant Cognition and Communication Lab, the members of the University of Calgary Speech Development Lab, and the parents and infants who participated.
Funding
This research was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01HD072018 awarded to AV and SC.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
SC and AV designed the study. AY collected and analyzed the data. All authors wrote, edited, and approved the final manuscript.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Ethical Approval
All procedures performed in the study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Informed Consent
Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Yamashiro, A., Curtin, S. & Vouloumanos, A. Does an Early Speech Preference Predict Linguistic and Social-Pragmatic Attention in Infants Displaying and Not Displaying Later ASD Symptoms?. J Autism Dev Disord 50, 2475–2490 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-019-03924-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-019-03924-2