Imitation Behavior Key Predictor In Autistic Kids' Speech Development: Texas Researchers

AUSTIN, TX — New findings by University of Texas at Austin educators released Tuesday focus on the imitation behavior of autistic children as the key predictor of their development toward flexible speech.

Nearly 30 percent of children with autism will not have learned to flexibly speak by the end of elementary school, researchers noted. In looking to help them, learning the right time to intervene in the children's speech development is paramount, researchers added.

Hence the focus on autistic children's imitation behavior, which yields clarity about the timing of intervention, researchers suggested. To understand this idea beyond the abstract, think of a baby: Just before babies' first words emerge, they start to communicate with caregivers by combining gestures and sounds. For example, a baby might look at a parent while pointing to a toy and emitting a sound suggesting the baby wants it.

Researchers call this behavior "intentional communication," which predicts later language ability in children with autism spectrum disorder. Yet until now, the most important predictors of intentional communication were unknown, said researcher Michael Sandbank.

“Identifying those predictors provides us with an idea of what outcomes to target in early intervention to improve the likelihood that children with autism will learn to intentionally communicate, and then to speak,” Sandbank, an assistant professor of special education at UT’s College of Education, said. “That early intervention can help substantially improve the long-term life and academic outcomes of children with autism.”

Sandbank recently conducted a study published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders that sought the most important predictor of intentional communication. To do so, she utilized data from a larger multi-site longitudinal study led by professors Paul J. Yoder and Linda Watson that took place at Vanderbilt University and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, university officials said.

Children in that study were between the ages of two and four when they entered, and participated for 16 months with no intervention. Instead, they were brought in at study entry and every four months to participate in assessments that measured the development of their intentional communication, language and several other factors the researchers thought might predict their communication development over time, researchers explained.

Sandbank and her collaborators chose five behaviors they believed to be predictors of children’s intentional communication growth. These behaviors included the children’s ability to imitate actions, play with objects and follow a caregiver’s point or gaze with their eyes to see what the caregiver was talking about. These five factors also included two important things parents do: respond to their children’s play actions by physically playing with them or imitating them, and respond to their children’s play actions by talking about objects with which their children were playing.

“When we did the math, we were surprised to find that imitation was the most important predictor of intentional communication growth,” Sandbank said. “It means that the play-based methods that researchers have developed to help children learn to imitate communicative gestures may also help to put them on the path to speaking with success.”

Although imitation was determined to be the most important predictor, Sandbank noted that “this doesn’t mean that the other factors aren’t important.” Instead, she said, it gives researchers a better understanding of the developmental sequence of intentional communication and, with luck, the best way to target it.

>>> Photo by Christina S. Murrey courtesy of University of Texas at Austin