Pauline Maes

Purpose: Evidence that bilingual exposure does not negatively affect language outcomes in autistic individuals has expanded over the past 15 years. However, research on bilingualism in autism has been limited to focusing on one language or each language separately, which does not capture natural bilingual dynamics such as code switching. This study examined how English–Spanish autistic speakers use their languages to communicate in semistructured settings. Method: Thirty English–Spanish autistic bilingual individuals (age range: 5.33–42.33 years) participated in two semistructured interactions with either a caregiver or a bilingual examiner. In each context, participants were instructed to speak either English or Spanish. Video recordings were transcribed and coded for code switching. Language proficiency in each language was measured using mean length of utterance in morphemes and number of different words. From the transcripts, we extracted rates of target language utterances (matching the instructed language), intersentential code switching (using the noncontextual language), and intrasentential code switching (mixing languages within an utterance). Results: Participants were, on average, more proficient in English than in Spanish. Code switching occurred primarily when participants were instructed to speak Spanish, with English-dominant individuals and those who were less proficient in Spanish switching back to English more frequently. Code switching was also more frequent during interactions with a familiar caregiver than an unfamiliar examiner. Conclusions: The language of English–Spanish autistic individuals reflects expected patterns of bilingual use. They showed greater proficiency in their societal than in their heritage language and seemed to rely on code switching primarily to compensate for limited proficiency in their nondominant Spanish. These findings add to the growing body of evidence that bilingualism should not be viewed as detrimental in autism.

Although bilingualism is now recognized as having no adverse effects on language outcomes in autistic children, little is known about how it manifests in early development, particularly in minimally speaking children who may show unique patterns of bilingual expression. The present study used naturalistic language sampling to characterize bilingual language use in minimally speaking autistic children and their caregivers. Video recordings of 31 minimally speaking autistic children interacting with their caregivers during two separate sessions of the Brief Observation of Symptoms of Autism (BOSA)—one in English and one in Spanish—were transcribed and analyzed for language skills (mean length of utterance in words, number of different words), speaking rate (utterances per minute), and use of English, Spanish, or mixed‐language utterances. We found that children were slightly more proficient in English than in Spanish, especially in the number of different words. Both children and caregivers produced similar rates of speech across the English and Spanish BOSA sessions, suggesting that language choice did not quantitatively impact their interaction. Finally, children aligned with their caregivers' language use more consistently in English than in Spanish. Although they responded in Spanish when caregivers used Spanish, they also switched into English a lot during the Spanish BOSA. These findings suggest that minimally speaking autistic children flexibly adapt to their caregiver's language while showing an early advantage or preference for their societally dominant language.

Purpose: Canonical babbling is a key stage in speech development, and atypical canonical babbling can be an early sign of speech disability. Speech onset delays and language disability are frequent in autism, but studies that focus on the rate or onset of canonical babbling report mixed findings. Quantity-based metrics can obscure qualitative differences in canonical babbling productions, such as, and more specifically, the sequential organization of syllable transitions, which may be more sensitive to early group differences. Method: Using at-home recordings of thirty-six 18-month-olds (autistic: n = 10, non-autistic: n = 26), we analyzed transition probabilities of consonant categories (stops, nasals, fricatives, liquids, and glides) within canonical babblings. Results: In both autistic and non-autistic children, the probability of producing a consonant depends primarily on the immediately preceding one. We did not find any significant difference in the frequency of canonical babbling between autistic and non-autistic children. However, transition structures differed overall (Frobenius distance), and autistic children's sequences were more predictable and less varied (lower Shannon entropy rate), whereas the tendency to repeat the same category (stay probability) did not differ between groups. Finally, several specific consonant transitions were numerically different, but only one (liquid to the end of the utterance) remained reliable after correction and covariate control. Conclusions: Canonical babbling at 18 months of age reflects local, first-order constraints; in autism, global organization appears more constrained, even though autistic children may babble just as much as their non-autistic peers. Our results provide promising evidence that the structure of babbling, rather than its sheer frequency or segmental diversity, distinguishes the two groups and deserves further exploration. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.32513430

Background and aims: Nongenerative speech is the rote repetition of words or phrases heard from others or oneself. The most common manifestations of nongenerative speech are immediate and delayed echolalia, which are a well-attested clinical feature and a salient aspect of atypical language use in autism. However, there are no current estimates of the frequency of nongenerative speech, and the individual characteristics associated with nongenerative speech use in individuals across the autistic spectrum are poorly understood. In this study, we aim to measure and characterize spontaneous and nongenerative speech use in minimally verbal and verbally fluent autistic children and adolescents. Methods: Participants were 50 minimally verbal and 50 verbally fluent autistic individuals aged 6 to 21 years. Spontaneous and nongenerative speech samples were derived from SALT transcripts of ADOS-2 assessments. Participants’ intelligible speech utterances were categorized as spontaneous or nongenerative. Spontaneous versus nongenerative utterances were compared between language subgroups on frequency of use and linguistic structure. Associations between nongenerative speech use and a series of individual characteristics (ADOS-2 subscale scores, nonverbal IQ, receptive vocabulary, and chronological age) were investigated over the whole sample and for each language subgroup independently. Results: Almost all participants produced some nongenerative speech. Minimally verbal individuals produced significantly more nongenerative than spontaneous utterances, and more nongenerative utterances compared to verbally fluent individuals. Verbally fluent individuals produced limited rates of nongenerative utterances, in comparison to their much higher rates of spontaneous utterances. Across the sample, nongenerative utterance rates were associated with nonverbal IQ and receptive vocabulary, but not separately for the two language subgroups. In verbally fluent individuals, only age was significantly inversely associated with nongenerative speech use such that older individuals produced fewer nongenerative utterances. In minimally verbal individuals, there were no associations between any of the individual characteristics and nongenerative speech use. In terms of linguistic structure, the lexical diversity of nongenerative and spontaneous utterances of both language subgroups was comparable. Morphosyntactic complexity was higher for spontaneous compared to nongenerative utterances in verbally fluent individuals, while no differences emerged between the two utterance types in minimally verbal individuals. Conclusions: Nongenerative speech presents differently in minimally verbal and verbally fluent autistic individuals. Although present in verbally fluent individuals, nongenerative speech appears to be a major feature of spoken language in minimally verbal children and adolescents. Implications: Our results advocate for more research on the expressive language profiles of autistic children and adolescents who remain minimally verbal and for further investigations of nongenerative speech, which is usually excluded from language samples. Given its prevalence in the spoken language of minimally verbal individuals, nongenerative speech could be used as a way to engage in and maintain communication with this subgroup of autistic individuals.

In this study, we report an extensive investigation of the structural language and acoustical specificities of the spontaneous speech of ten three- to five-year-old verbal autistic children. The autistic children were compared to a group of ten typically developing children matched pairwise on chronological age, nonverbal IQ and socioeconomic status, and groupwise on verbal IQ and gender on various measures of structural language (phonetic inventory, lexical diversity and morpho-syntactic complexity) and a series of acoustical measures of speech (mean and range fundamental frequency, a formant dispersion index, syllable duration, jitter and shimmer). Results showed that, overall, the structure and acoustics of the verbal autistic children’s speech were highly similar to those of the TD children. Few remaining atypicalities in the speech of autistic children lay in a restricted use of different vocabulary items, a somewhat diminished morpho-syntactic complexity, and a slightly exaggerated syllable duration.

In many autistic children, speech onset is delayed and expressive language emerges after 3 years of age. We qualitatively and quantitatively describe oral productions of autistic preschoolers, including many non- or minimally speaking, recorded during interactions with a caregiver and with an experimenter. Data clustering on manually coded oral production samples indicates five validated linguistic profiles of oral production in this diverse and inclusive sample ( n = 59) of 3- to 5-year-old autistic children with highly variable expressive language abilities. These profiles are then compared on a series of demographic (age, socioeconomic status) and psychometric (autism severity, nonverbal and verbal IQ) measures, as well as on additional measures of language (expressive vocabulary, phonetic inventories). Two clusters are composed of speaking autistic children, while the three others comprise non- or minimally speaking children with qualitatively different patterns of vocal productions. The five-profile division suggests that traditional binary division of speaking vs nonspeaking children does not do justice to the complexity of early expressive language in autism. Lay For most autistic children, spoken language emergence and development happen after the age of 3. Once they start developing and using spoken language, some eventually manage to reach typical levels of language abilities, while others remain minimally speaking into adulthood. It is therefore difficult to consider young autistic preschoolers as a homogeneous group in terms of spoken language levels. In our study, we breakdown a representative and inclusive group of children on the spectrum aged from 3 to 5 into five subgroups that correspond to different linguistic profiles. To do so, we qualitatively described children’s (pre)verbal productions elicited during interactions with a parent and with an experimenter. We then used a type of statistical analysis called cluster analysis to group together the children that had a similar expressive (pre)linguistic behavior. Using this analysis, we were able to delineate five linguistic profiles with qualitatively different patterns of vocal production. Two of these profiles are composed of speaking children; the three others are composed of non- or minimally speaking children. Our findings show that traditional binary division of speaking versus nonspeaking autistic children is not precise enough to describe the heterogeneity of early spoken language in young autistic children. They also support the use of qualitative descriptions of vocal productions and speech to accurately document children’s level of language, which could, in turn, help design very finely tailored language intervention specific to each child.