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Maternal Gesture Use and Language Development in Infant Siblings of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

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Abstract

Impairments in language and communication are an early-appearing feature of autism spectrum disorders (ASD), with delays in language and gesture evident as early as the first year of life. Research with typically developing populations highlights the importance of both infant and maternal gesture use in infants’ early language development. The current study explores the gesture production of infants at risk for autism and their mothers at 12 months of age, and the association between these early maternal and infant gestures and between these early gestures and infants’ language at 18 months. Gestures were scored from both a caregiver-infant interaction (both infants and mothers) and from a semi-structured task (infants only). Mothers of non-diagnosed high risk infant siblings gestured more frequently than mothers of low risk infants. Infant and maternal gesture use at 12 months was associated with infants’ language scores at 18 months in both low risk and non-diagnosed high risk infants. These results demonstrate the impact of risk status on maternal behavior and the importance of considering the role of social and contextual factors on the language development of infants at risk for autism. Results from the subset of infants who meet preliminary criteria for ASD are also discussed.

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Notes

  1. Many of the infants included in this study have been seen at 24 or 36 months of age (LRC: 2 at 24 months, 25 at 27 months; HRA: 4 at 18 months, 10 at 24 months, and 33 at 36 months). Whenever available, ADOS scores and clinical judgment from these later visits will be used in making diagnostic classifications.

  2. Although many studies of the impact of gesture on language development use a measure of vocabulary such as the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (MCDI; Fenson et al. 2007), this measure was not added until later in the study and therefore was only available for 30 of the 75 infants in this analysis (21 HRA, 9 LRC). Descriptive information on the vocabulary measure of the MCDI (number of words produced) for this subset of infants is presented in Table 3 for comparison.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the children and families who participated in this study, Susan Goldin-Meadow, PhD. for sharing her coding system with us, our collaborator, Dr. Alice Carter, and the students and staff who assisted in the data collection for this project. This study was supported by grants from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIH R01 DC 010290-01 and R21 DC 08637), Autism Speaks, and the Simons Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Boston University, 64 Cummington St., Boston, MA, 02215, USA

    Meagan R. Talbott & Helen Tager-Flusberg

  2. Division of Developmental Medicine, Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience, Children’s Hospital Boston, 1 Autumn Street, 6th Floor, Boston, MA, 02215, USA

    Charles A. Nelson

  3. Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Charles A. Nelson

  4. Harvard Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Charles A. Nelson

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  1. Meagan R. Talbott
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Correspondence to Meagan R. Talbott.

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Talbott, M.R., Nelson, C.A. & Tager-Flusberg, H. Maternal Gesture Use and Language Development in Infant Siblings of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. J Autism Dev Disord 45, 4–14 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-013-1820-0

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