Communication In Young Children Research Articles

Social Communication in Young Children With Sex Chromosome Trisomy (XXY, XXX, XYY): A Study With Eye Tracking and Heart Rate Measures.

Children with sex chromosome trisomy (SCT) have an increased risk for suboptimal development. Difficulties with language are frequently reported, start from a very young age, and encompass various domains. This cross-sectional study examined social orientation with eye tracking and physiological arousal responses to gain more knowledge on how children perceive and respond to communicative bids and evaluated the associations between social orientation and language outcomes, concurrently and 1 year later. In total, 107 children with SCT (33 XXX, 50 XXY, and 24 XYY) and 102 controls (58 girls and 44 boys) aged between 1 and 7years were included. Assessments took place in the USA and Western Europe. A communicative bids eye tracking paradigm, physiological arousal measures, and receptive and expressive language outcomes were used. Compared to controls, children with SCT showed reduced attention to the face and eyes of the on-screen interaction partner and reduced physiological arousal sensitivity in response to direct versus averted gaze. In addition, social orientation to the mouth was related to concurrent receptive and expressive language abilities in 1-year-old children with SCT. Children with SCT may experience difficulties with social communication that extend past the well-recognized risk for early language delays. These difficulties may underlie social-behavioral problems that have been described in the SCT population and are an important target for early monitoring and support.

Towards Developing a Science-Language Learning Programme for the Equality of Sustainable Learning Opportunities for Young Children

It is imperative to offer equal quality learning opportunities for young children at both deprived and advantaged early childhood development centres (ECDCs). To this end, substantive involvement by young children in the envisioned quality learning that should take place, even in constrained contexts, warrants thoughtful exploration. Consequently, this study investigated the development of young children's communication and mathematical skills to explore the affordances of the South African National Curriculum Framework for children from birth to 4 years in relation to incorporating science concepts. Our proposition for privileging science concepts relevant to early learning and development areas of the curriculum framework was premised on the urge to respond to young children's current learning needs in order to make learning in the future sustainable. We adopted a participatory action research design, undergirded by principles of intra-relationality, to develop an assessment and activity plan consistent with our proposition. Using the principles of free attitude interviews and brainstorming as techniques, rich qualitative data were generated during meetings, workshops, and reflection sessions with study team member participants. The team made the following observations and findings: the transition of young children from ECD to Grade R is marred by challenges that make the learning of young children beyond ECD unsustainable because of the absence of continual communication between the ECD and Grade R teachers and, to some extent, between the parents (home) and the ECDC. Through the knowledge gained from regular participatory action-oriented meetings, workshops, and reflections, the study contributed to the development of participants and benefited the ECDC involved in this study in several respects.

Child Communication Research and Practice: Collaborative Roles for Behavior Analysts and Speech-Language Pathologists

Young children's social communication is key to their development and well-being. Naturalistic interventions can promote social communication in young children. Anyone concerned about children's social communication—families, professionals, planning teams, referral sources, funders, and policymakers—should understand the complementary roles of behavior analysts (BCBAs) and speech-language pathologists (SLPs), who both utilize naturalistic interventions. Resistance to collaboration may be rooted in broader conversations about differing theories of language development. BCBAs and SLPs likely have similar overarching goals and expectations, but collaboration has been unfortunately rare, due to field-specific training and recommendations. BCBAs and SLPs who adopt a unified theory of practice will place children, families, and educators at the center of all decisions. An interdisciplinary model rooted in research about naturalistic interventions, collaboration, and equitable practices that incorporates feedback from providers and researchers in each field, could address challenges. This model highlights (a) understanding key tenets from each respective field, (b) developing interdisciplinary teams, (c) measuring and evaluating collaborative planning, and (d) promoting mutual respect and equity. Children benefit when professionals collaborate.

Programmatic Costs of Project ImPACT for Children with Autism: A Time-Driven Activity Based Costing Study.

Programmatic cost assessment of clinical interventions can inform future dissemination and implementation efforts. We conducted a randomized trial of Project ImPACT (Improving Parents As Communication Teachers) in which community early intervention (EI) providers coached caregivers in techniques to improve young children's social communication skills. We estimated implementation and intervention costs while demonstrating an application of Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing (TDABC). We defined Project ImPACT implementation and intervention as processes that can be broken down successively into a set of procedures. We created process maps for both implementation and intervention delivery. We determined resource use and costs, per unit procedure in the first year of the program, from a payer perspective. We estimated total implementation cost per clinician and per site, intervention cost per child, and provided estimates of total hours spent and associated costs for implementation strategies, intervention activities and their detailed procedures. Total implementation cost was $43,509 per clinic and $14,503 per clinician. Clinician time (60%) and coach time (12%) were the most expensive personnel resources. Implementation coordination and monitoring (47%), ongoing consultation (26%) and clinician training (19%) comprised most of the implementation cost, followed by fidelity assessment (7%), and stakeholder engagement (1%). Per-child intervention costs were $2619 and $9650, respectively, at a dose of one hour per week and four hours per week Project ImPACT. Clinician and clinic leader time accounted for 98% of per child intervention costs. Highest cost intervention activity was ImPACT delivery to parents (89%) followed by assessment for child's ImPACT eligibility (10%). The findings can be used to inform funding and policy decision-making to enhance early intervention options for young children with autism. Uncompensated time costs of clinicians are large which raises practical and ethical concerns and should be considered in planning of implementation initiatives. In program budgeting, decisionmakers should anticipate resource needs for coordination and monitoring activities. TDABC may encourage researchers to assess costs more systematically, relying on process mapping and gathering prospective data on resource use and costs concurrently with their collection of other trial data.

Preliminary evidence supporting the clinical utility of an Analog Task of Prosocial Helping.

Prosocial helping is a fundamental communication behaviour that supports successful social relationships. This study investigated the clinical utility of the Analog Task of Prosocial Helping (AToP-H): a tool for assessing how helping is influenced by the communicative function it serves and the cues used to elicit helping in young children with and without a social communication disorder. To present evidence of the AToP-H's reliability, validity and clinical utility. The AToP-H examines three communicative functions expressed through helping-instrumental (request-based), informative (information-based) and empathic (emotion-based) helping-within a naturalistic context. Prosocial helping is elicited using semi-structured interactions in which increasingly explicit cues are provided to scaffold child responses. To gather reliability and validity evidence, the AToP-H was administered to 20 children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (49-79 months) and 20 with typical development (37-77 months). Procedural reliability and inter-observer agreement for the AToP-H were high. Item-level codes were consistent with overall task performance, showing strong internal consistency. Supporting construct validity, higher scores were observed in older children with ASD, consistent with an expectedly protracted developmental period for prosocial helping. Children with ASD required more cues to elicit helping overall and informative and empathic helping in particular. Furthermore, more children with ASD did not respond or required explicit cues to respond with informative and empathic helping. Supporting criterion-related validity, total helping cue scores were significantly correlated with measures of social cognition, social abilities and receptive language, but were only weakly correlated with general language. The AToP-H shows promise in measuring helping performance as an indicator of young children's social communication strengths and weaknesses as well as scaffolding cues to facilitate intervention planning. What is already known on the subject Prosocial helping is critical for successful relationships, which can be difficult for children with social communication disorders such as ASD. Two factors that influence helping are the communicative function of the helping behaviour and the cues used to elicit helping. Existing helping tasks have been developed for research purposes, focusing on internal validity with little attention to applying or generalizing results to clinical settings or groups. Thus, assessing factors that influence helping behaviours in naturalistic, ecologically valid contexts could provide clinicians with critical information to improve prosocial helping in children with social communication disorders. What this paper adds to existing knowledge This paper presents preliminary psychometric evidence for a naturalistic clinical task: the AToP-H, which assesses instrumental (request-based), informative (information-based) and empathic (emotion-based) helping elicited with increasingly explicit cues. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? Evidence from samples of young children with and without ASD supports the reliability and validity of AToP-H scores. The AToP-H shows promise as a clinical tool to effectively assess and plan interventions targeting social communication, prosocial helping and associated interactions.

Imaging Findings in Pediatric Hip Pain: A Pictorial Review

Pediatric hip pain may be caused by a variety of pathology, many of which are uniquely related to the anatomy of the immature skeletal system. Diagnosis of a specific etiology can sometimes be difficult given overlapping clinical presentation and potential barriers in communication in young children. Imaging is usually required in conjunction with clinical findings for diagnosis. In this article, we review imaging features of common sources of pediatric hip pain with a focus on ultrasound and radiography.

Parent Ratings of Generalized and Indirect Effects of Functional Communication Training for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Functional communication training (FCT) is a behavioral treatment that has been shown to reduce problem behavior and increase appropriate communication in young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In this study, we assessed the effects of FCT on targeted and nontargeted problem behaviors outside of the training context, as well as parent stress, for 30 young children with ASD and their parents. Indirect measures of generalization treatment effects were administered prior to and following FCT treatment delivered via telehealth. Children demonstrated significant improvement on both targeted (measured via observation) and nontargeted (measured via checklist) problem behaviors, both within and outside of the training context, and parent stress was significantly reduced following treatment. These results suggest that the impact of FCT may extend beyond the training context for both the children being treated and the parents delivering treatment, even when generalization is not specifically programmed for during treatment.

Feasibility of effectiveness trials in pediatric anesthesia.

Effectiveness studies aim to investigate whether an intervention does more good than harm in normal clinical practice. Historically, research in pediatric anesthesia has appropriately concentrated on efficacy studies which even if of excellent design, tell us little about how generalizable or applicable the findings are to routine clinical practice. Simultaneously effectiveness and cost-effectiveness research has been limited due to systematic and cultural factors. To understand the challenges of effectiveness research in children, it is necessary to examine the overlapping relationship between efficacy, effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness studies. This can be illuminated with Cochrane´s hierarchy of investigation and the disease, illness, and sickness modelfrom the philosophy of science. Effectiveness (illness perspective) studies form the middle rung of Cochrane´s research hierarchy, between efficacy (disease perspective) and cost-effectiveness (sickness perspective) research. Effectiveness studies aim to be generalizable and determine whether interventions work in routine clinical practice. Since outcomes that reflect patient priorities offer the most generalizability these are encouraged in effectiveness studies. Due to developing consciousness and communication in young children, identifying and measuring patient-centered outcomes has challenges. These challenges are not insurmountable and with appropriate communication and research techniques the subjective nature of the experience of illness in the young may be elucidated and should direct research goals where possible. Sickness perspective research, in terms of cost-effectiveness, remains underdeveloped in pediatric anesthesia. Pediatric anesthesia has a strong base in efficacy research, but the need to expand research to include effectiveness and eventually cost-effectiveness studies should not be ignored.

TYPOLOGY OF DEVIATIONS IN SOCIAL COMMUNICATION OF YOUNG CHILDREN WITH VARIOUS VARIANTS OF DEVELOPMENTAL DELAY

The article deals with the problem of identifying typical and atypical deviations in the development of social communication in young children with various variants of dysontogenesis. At the beginning, the author gives a brief excursion into the history of the organization of early comprehensive care at the bases of preschool educational organizations in Moscow in the period from 2009 to 2014. (in early aid services, short-stay groups, game support centres, etc.). The article also describes the current opportunities for young children and their families to receive correctional, developmental and counselling services in Moscow and the Moscow Region. The author focuses on the heterogeneity of the contingent of children with developmental disabilities and identifies three main groups: with delayed speech development, delayed cognitive and speech development, as well as with deviations in the emotional and volitional sphere. A statistical analysis of the identification of such delays in development during 2009–2014 is provided and over the past academic year, on the basis of various educational organizations, on the basis of which psychological and pedagogical support for young children with developmental problems and their parents was organized. The experimental data obtained by the author indicate an increase in the number of young children with deviations in the emotional and volitional sphere. This category of children often causes difficulties for specialists in conducting psychological and pedagogical diagnostics and determining an individual pedagogical route. Further, the article presents a typology of typical and atypical deviations in the development of social communication in young children with previously considered variants of dysontogenesis. Special attention is paid to the assessment of the level of communicative development, social interaction and emotional response of children of different categories. At the end of the article, attention is focused on another category of babies – children of the “risk group” for possible manifestations of the consequences of exposure to negative factors in the perinatal period of development. Such children require special dynamic monitoring by adults, need propaedeutic psychological and pedagogical measures in order to prevent the appearance of developmental delays.

Effects of Project ImPACT Parent-Mediated Intervention on the Spoken Language of Young Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Purpose The purpose of this study was to measure spoken language and social communication in young children with autism spectrum disorder following their participation in a 12-week parent-mediated intervention. Method Nineteen children with autism spectrum disorder and their primary caregivers completed the Project ImPACT intervention, which focuses on language, social engagement, imitation, and play. Expressive vocabulary and social communication were measured pre- and posttreatment. Results Expressive vocabulary significantly increased at the group level as measured by parent report. Expressive vocabulary for half of the sample grew by more than 25%, indicating good response to intervention. However, when a categorical approach was applied using total number of words, all but one of the participants who was minimally verbal pretreatment remained minimally verbal after treatment. Clinicians reported significant increases on all dimensions of social communication as measured by the Social Communication Checklist with the exception of imitation. Caregiver responses on the Social Communication Checklist suggested significant growth in only form of language and play functions. Greater change in spoken language between pre- and posttreatment was significantly related to higher posttreatment average scores of language form, language function, understanding, imitation, and play dimensions, as reported by caregivers. Conclusions Results provide preliminary evidence for the effectiveness of parent-mediated interventions on spoken language in addition to social communication.

Mexican-American preschoolers as co-creators of zones of proximal development during retellings of culturally relevant stories: A participatory study

This study explores communication and retelling skills that are revealed after Mexican-American preschoolers engaged in culturally sensitive read alouds. Participants, highlighted in this article, included two four-year-old preschool children in a Spanish/English dual language classroom. The children selected culturally relevant texts and engaged in story retellings with their respective parent. The findings indicate that children co-constructed Zones of Proximal Development (ZPDs) in response to their parents' caring moves. Participants responded as cared-fors and carers as evident in their use of memorization skills and attention to detail to appropriate vocabulary and effectively retell a story. Additionally, preschoolers extended their ZPDs through imagination and inferencing by inserting events into the narrative and reading between the lines to expand and enrich the original stories. These findings have implications for reframing the way in which educators capitalize on young children's communication skills.

Impact of Pre-primary Education on Children in Bangladesh: A Study on Government Primary Schools in Sylhet City

Pre-primary education is one of the most important and basic stages of education. The study focuses on the impact of pre-primary education on children to ensure quality education, as part of the fulfillment of the commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) by 2030. This study has been conducted based on a social survey (n=60) in Bangladesh's Sylhet city by using explanatory and descriptive research methods. Results delineated that majority of the respondents consider that pre-primary education is important for children’s early age learning to compete in this changing world and ensure better communication for young children. But they also argued that in government schools, there is a lack of infrastructural facilities, funds, number of teachers, and teaching materials in proportion to students to provide lessons properly. So, the government and concerned authority should reduce problems and increase facilities for a good teaching environment at the pre-primary level.

Generalized Effects of Naturalistic Social Communication Intervention for Minimally Verbal Children with Autism.

JASP-EMT, the combined Enhanced Milieu Teaching (EMT) and Joint Attention, Structured Play, and Emotion Regulation (JASPER) interventions, has been found to be effective for promoting social communication in young children with autism (Kasari et al. in J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 53(6):635-646, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2014.01.019 , 2014). The current study examined the effects of this naturalistic intervention on social language use in three children with autism who were in the early stages of language acquisition. Generalization to communication partners who did not utilize the intervention strategies was systematically examined using a multiple-baseline design. The results from this study indicate that this blended intervention is effective in increasing target social language for young children with autism, however, generalization to communication partners does not readily occur. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.

Examining Social Communication Effects of a Picture Communication Board in a Child With Autism

Purpose Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems have been shown to increase requesting and protesting among minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, there is a lack of research on using AAC to address social communication in ASD. Additionally, most previous research on AAC involves expensive, difficult-to-access technology. Enhanced milieu teaching and joint attention, symbolic play, engagement, and regulation interventions have been combined to successfully improve social communication in ASD. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of introducing a low-technology, picture-based communication board using enhanced milieu teaching with joint attention, symbolic play, engagement, and regulation on social communication. Method An A-B-A-B single-subject design was implemented with a minimally verbal boy with ASD aged 3;4 (years;months). Three baseline sessions were followed by six intervention sessions and then repeated. Outcome measures included frequency of communicative acts, percentage of communication acts using AAC, and percentage of communication acts that were social. Visual analysis in combination with Tau-U effect sizes was used to evaluate the effects of intervention. Results Clear and immediate effects on frequency of communication (Tau-U = 0.97) and adoption of the AAC system (Tau-U = 1.00) were observed. The intervention did not clearly impact social communication (Tau-U = 0.17). Conclusions This study extends previous research indicating that AAC can quickly increase communication frequency to low-technology, accessible systems. The intervention dosage may have been insufficient to affect social communication, and further research should consider whether picture communication boards can positively influence social communication in young children with ASD.

Parents report fewer executive functioning problems and repetitive behaviors in young dual-language speakers with autism

ABSTRACT More dual language learners (DLLs) are being identified early with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, many families are still being advised against dual language exposure, despite a lack of evidence of negative impacts on language development in ASD. Research in typically developing children has noted advantages for bilinguals in domains such as executive functioning and social skills, but less is known about the effects in ASD. The present study evaluated differences in executive functioning and social communication in young children (n = 55) with ASD. Dual-language learners with ASD had significantly fewer parent reported executive functioning problems and repetitive behaviors; parent-reported social communication skills were generally comparable across groups. Our findings indicate that the bilingual advantage in executive functioning may extend to children with neurodevelopmental conditions.

Rates of Prelinguistic Communication and Early Symbol Use in Young Children With Down Syndrome: Using a Progress-Monitoring Tool to Model Growth.

Purpose This study aims to provide descriptive data on rates of expressive communication skill use in young children with Down syndrome (DS) across early childhood. Children with DS are known to have delays in expressive communication, but there are little current data on rates of communication in early skills, such as gestures, vocalizations, words, and word combinations. In addition, few studies use measures that offer a composite or "across-skills" view of early development across time. Method This article used a longitudinal descriptive design to generate growth curves for expected rates of communication in young children with DS in 4 major skill elements as measured by the Individual Growth and Development Indicator-Early Communication Index. Using data from 19 children aged 11-42 months with DS, we used hierarchical linear modeling to generate growth curves for children with DS while comparing them to the benchmarked data available for children who are typically developing. Results Results indicate relative strengths in gesture use, a longer period of vocalizations, and lower rates of growth in single and multiple word combinations across time. Children differed significantly from one another on all parameters. Conclusion These data indicate a need to develop and research interventions to support the transition from gestures to words and that support early word combinations in young children with DS.

Teaching Preschoolers With Down Syndrome Using Augmentative and Alternative Communication Modeling During Small Group Dialogic Reading.

Purpose This study evaluated the effect of aided augmentative and alternative communication modeling (AAC-MOD) on the communication skills of children with Down syndrome (DS) during small group dialogic reading. Method Four children with DS between 3;1 and 5;3 (years;months; M = 4;5) and 5 typically developing peers between 3;5 and 5;9 (M = 4;3) participated. Effects were examined using a multiple probe across behaviors design with 4 children with DS. To simulate typical dialogic reading routines in inclusive classrooms, a strategy called Read, Ask, Answer, Prompt (Binger, Kent-Walsh, Ewing, & Taylor, 2010) was applied during the baseline and intervention sessions. Results A functional relation was demonstrated between (a) AAC-MOD and percentage of correctly identified symbols for 3 participants, (b) AAC-MOD and rate of symbolic communication for 2 participants, and (c) AAC-MOD and number of different words for 2 participants. Increases in number of multiple word combinations occurred for 2 participants. All 4 children maintained their percentage of correctly identified symbols. Increases in rate of symbolic communication did not generalize to thematic play contexts, a distal measure of response generalization. Conclusion AAC-MOD is an effective strategy for teaching target vocabulary and increasing rate of symbolic communication in young children with DS. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.10093538.

Naturalistic Interventions to Improve Prelinguistic Communication for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: a Systematic Review

The current review identified 11 single-case design (SCD) and 14 group-design evaluations of naturalistic behavioral interventions targeting prelinguistic social communication in young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Three SCD studies and eight group design studies utilized methodologically rigorous designs and demonstrated a functional relation between the intervention and child prelinguistic social communication. Results of this systematic review provide information about efficacy of specific naturalistic behavioral interventions, details about the intervention, and characteristics of the implementation agent and setting. Such information may be useful to support implementation of evidence-based practices and increase the quality of future research.

유아기 자녀를 둔 가족의 의사소통에 나타난 상호작용 의례: 유대 형성의 맥락을 중심으로

The purpose of this study was to examine the everyday life of families young children investigate their interaction rituals in order to understand how young children and their family members form connectedness. In the contextual aspect of connectedness formation, the following question was asked: What is the interaction ritual of communication in families young children? Research participants were four families with young children first-born chileren who were born in the Busan metropolitan and South Gyeongsang Province. The data were collected through participant observation and parental interviews during the period from August 2015 to August 2016. The collected data were analyzed through coding and the repetitive and cyclic analysis of theme creation. In terms of establishing connectedness among families with young children, interaction rituals of communication in the young children’s families were identified into three categories: ‘meal time: gathering face to face’, ‘co-sleeping: gathering of touch’, and ‘play: gathering of electricity’. This study is meaningful in that it is the first study to explain how families with young children establish psychological and social bonds through examining the vivid aspects of their everyday life. This study clarifies the communication and family connectedness in the real life context of the family environment and interaction rituals. In addition, the present study has confirmed the power of young children as strong agents of communication within their families.

The relation between parent verbal responsiveness and child communication in young children with or at risk for autism spectrum disorder: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Among preschool-age children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing children, parents' verbal responsiveness (PVR) has long been shown to predict children's later language ability. However, before the age of three, when language develops most rapidly, the early social communication deficits associated with ASD may impact parents' opportunities to facilitate early language development. The aim of this review was to characterize the relation between PVR and the vocal communication ability of children with or at high risk for ASD early in development. Specifically, we examined whether the relation between PVR and child communication varied by type of PVR and by child diagnostic status, as well as whether interventions increased PVR. A systematic multi-database search yielded 25 empirical studies (804 parent-toddler dyads; 30 effect sizes) that met inclusion criteria and related a variable of PVR to a variable of child vocalization or language. Meta-regression analyses revealed that the relation between PVR and child communication was significant regardless of PVR type or child diagnostic status. To date, interventions targeting both PVR and child communication were found to significantly increase PVR, but not child communication, for these populations. Future research should examine parent-child communication in a transactional, longitudinal manner. In addition, these findings have implications for interventions designed to target parents' responsiveness and child communication. Autism Research 2019, 12: 715-731. © 2019 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: For families with children under 3 years old who are at risk for or diagnosed with ASD, this study revealed empirical evidence of a robust relation between parents'' verbal responsiveness to their children's play and communication and children's communication ability. This relation is similar to that reported in research on typically developing children. Interventions designed to improve parent-child interaction in children with or at risk for ASD may be effective in increasing parents' responsiveness.