The present study focused on parents' social cue use in relation to young children's attention. Participants were ten parent-child dyads; all children were 36 to 60 months old and were either typically developing (TD) or were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Children wore a head-mounted camera that recorded the proximate child view…

Adult responsiveness is related to language development both in young typically developing children and in children with autism spectrum disorders, such that parents who use more responsive language with their children have children who develop better language skills over time. This study used a micro-analytic technique to examine how two facets…

Background: In typical development, the unfolding of social and communicative skills hinges upon the ability to allocate and sustain attention toward people, a skill present moments after birth. Deficits in social attention have been well documented in autism, though the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. Methods: In order to parse the…

Variability in attention towards direct gaze and child-directed speech may contribute to heterogeneity of clinical presentation in toddlers with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). To evaluate this hypothesis, we clustered sixty-five 20-month-old toddlers with ASD based on their visual responses to dyadic cues for engagement, identifying three…

This study examined two facets of the use of social cues for early word learning in parent-child dyads, where children had an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) or were typically developing. In Experiment 1, we investigated word learning and generalization by children with ASD (age range: 3;01-6;02) and typically developing children (age range:…

Most children are able to successfully develop and use social skills in the context of interactions with peers and significant adults. Moreover, the ability to interact successfully with peers is crucial in establishing and maintaining viable social relationships. For children with disabilities, like pervasive development disorder (PDD),…

Previous studies indicate that the acoustic features of speech discriminate between positive and negative communicative intentions, such as approval and prohibition. Two studies investigated whether acoustic features of speech can discriminate between two positive communicative intentions: humour and sweet-sincerity, where sweet-sincerity involved…

Social referencing was investigated in 18-month-old siblings of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD; "high-risk infants"). Infants were exposed to novel toys, which were emotionally tagged via adults' facial and vocal signals. Infants' information seeking (initiation of joint attention with an adult) and their approach/withdrawal behavior…

There is a scarcity of empirically validated treatments for infants and toddlers under age 3 years with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), as well as a scarcity of empirical investigation into successful intervention characteristics for this population. Yet early screening efforts are focused on identifying autism risk in children under age 3 years.…

We compared responding to joint attention (RJA) in younger siblings of children with ASD (SIBS-ASD; n = 46) and younger siblings of children developing typically (SIBS-TD; n = 35). Children were tested between 12 and 23 months of age in a situation in which an experimenter directed the child's attention to one of 8 targets. Each child responded to…

This study used an intact group comparison to examine attention following in 34 children aged 2 years diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) matched pairwise for vocabulary comprehension with a group of typically developing toddlers. For both groups of children, the presence of verbal labels during a referential task increased attention to…