Abstract
We tested the effect of Auditory-Motor Mapping Training (AMMT), a novel, intonation-based treatment for spoken language originally developed for minimally verbal (MV) children with autism, on a more-verbal child with autism. We compared this child’s performance after 25 therapy sessions with that of: (1) a child matched on age, autism severity, and expressive language level who received 25 sessions of a non-intonation-based control treatment Speech Repetition Therapy (SRT); and (2) a matched pair of MV children (one of whom received AMMT; the other, SRT). We found a significant Time × Treatment effect in favor of AMMT for number of Syllables Correct and Consonants Correct per stimulus for both pairs of children, as well as a significant Time × Treatment effect in favor of AMMT for number of Vowels Correct per stimulus for the more-verbal pair. Magnitudes of the difference in post-treatment performance between AMMT and SRT, adjusted for Baseline differences, were: (a) larger for the more-verbal pair than for the MV pair; and (b) associated with very large effect sizes (Cohen’s d > 1.3) in the more-verbal pair. Results hold promise for the efficacy of AMMT for improving spoken language production in more-verbal children with autism as well as their MV peers and suggest hypotheses about brain function that are testable in both correlational and causal behavioral-imaging studies.
Highlights
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a neurodevelopmental condition affecting approximately 1/68 children (Christensen et al, 2016), is characterized by: (1) impairment in social communication; and (2) the presence of repetitive behaviors or restricted interests
The more-verbal Auditory-Motor Mapping Training (AMMT) participant improved by an adjusted mean of 0.3 Syllables Approximated per Stimulus, while the more-verbal Speech Repetition Therapy (SRT) participant decreased by an adjusted mean of 0.1
These effect sizes were larger than those for the difference between the minimally verbal (MV) AMMT and SRT participants (Cohen’s d approximately 0.9). These results suggest that AMMT may be at least as effective for more-verbal children with ASD as it is for MV children with ASD
Summary
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a neurodevelopmental condition affecting approximately 1/68 children (Christensen et al, 2016), is characterized by: (1) impairment in social communication; and (2) the presence of repetitive behaviors or restricted interests 25%–46% of children who receive a diagnosis of ASD remain minimally verbal (MV) past age five (Tager-Flusberg et al, 2005; Kasari et al, 2013; Tager-Flusberg and Kasari, 2013; Rose et al, 2016) meaning that they have an expressive vocabulary smaller than 20 words and no word combinations (Kasari et al, 2013). Spoken language treatment is important for many children with ASD. In contrast to language skills, which are severely disordered in minimally-verbal children with ASD, musical ability may be relatively intact. Applebaum et al (1979)
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