Le numéro de novembre 2018 du Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research est consacré à l’autisme :

Advances in Autism Research : From Learning Mechanisms to Novel Interventions

1. Wetherby AM, Woods J, Guthrie W, Delehanty A, Brown JA, Morgan L, Holland RD, Schatschneider C, Lord C. Changing Developmental Trajectories of Toddlers With Autism Spectrum Disorder : Strategies for Bridging Research to Community Practice. Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR. 2018 ; 61(11) : 2615-28.

Purpose : The need for community-viable, evidence-based intervention strategies for toddlers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a national priority. The purpose of this research forum article is to identify gaps in intervention research and needs in community practice for toddlers with ASD, incorporate published findings from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of the Early Social Interaction (ESI) model (Wetherby et al., 2014) to illustrate community-based intervention, report new findings on child active engagement from the ESI RCT, and offer solutions to bridge the research-to-community practice gap. Method : Research findings were reviewed to identify gaps in the evidence base for toddlers with ASD. Published and new findings from the multisite ESI RCT compared the effects of two different ESI conditions for 82 toddlers with ASD to teach parents how to support active engagement in natural environments. Results : The RCT of the ESI model was the only parent-implemented intervention that reported differential treatment effects on standardized measures of child outcomes, including social communication, developmental level, and adaptive behavior. A new measure of active engagement in the natural environment was found to be sensitive to change in 3 months for young toddlers with ASD and to predict outcomes on the standardized measures of child outcomes. Strategies for utilizing the Autism Navigator collection of web-based courses and tools using extensive video footage for families and professional development are offered for scaling up in community settings to change developmental trajectories of toddlers with ASD. Conclusions : Current health care and education systems are challenged to provide intervention of adequate intensity for toddlers with ASD. The use of innovative technology can increase acceleration of access to evidence-based early intervention for toddlers with ASD that addresses health disparities, enables immediate response as soon as ASD is suspected, and rapidly bridges the research-to-practice gap.

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2. Kasari C, Sturm A, Shih W. SMARTer Approach to Personalizing Intervention for Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder. Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR. 2018 ; 61(11) : 2629-40.

Purpose : This review article introduces research methods for personalization of intervention. Our goals are to review evidence-based practices for improving social communication impairment in children with autism spectrum disorder generally and then how these practices can be systematized in ways that personalize intervention, especially for children who respond slowly to an initial evidence-based practice. Method : The narrative reflects on the current status of modular and targeted interventions on social communication outcomes in the field of autism research. Questions are introduced regarding personalization of interventions that can be addressed through research methods. These research methods include adaptive treatment designs and the Sequential Multiple Assignment Randomized Trial. Examples of empirical studies using research designs are presented to answer questions of personalization. Conclusion : Bridging the gap between research studies and clinical practice can be advanced by research that attempts to answer questions pertinent to the broad heterogeneity in children with autism spectrum disorder, their response to interventions, and the fact that a single intervention is not effective for all children. Presentation Video : https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.7298021.

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3. Ellis Weismer S, Kaushanskaya M, Larson C, Mathee J, Bolt D. Executive Function Skills in School-Age Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder : Association With Language Abilities. Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR. 2018 ; 61(11) : 2641-58.

Purpose : This article reviews research on executive function (EF) skills in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and the relation between EF and language abilities. The current study assessed EF using nonverbal tasks of inhibition, shifting, and updating of working memory (WM) in school-age children with ASD. It also evaluated the association between children’s receptive and expressive language abilities and EF performance. Method : In this study, we sought to address variables that have contributed to inconsistencies in this area of research-including task issues, group comparisons, and participant heterogeneity. EF abilities in children with ASD (n = 48) were compared to typically developing controls (n = 71) matched on age, as well as when statistically controlling for group differences in nonverbal cognition, socioeconomic status, and social communication abilities. Six nonverbal EF tasks were administered-2 each to evaluate inhibition, shifting, and WM. Language abilities were assessed via a standardized language measure. Language-EF associations were examined for the ASD group as a whole and subdivided by language status. Results : Children with ASD exhibited significant deficits in all components of EF compared to age-mates and showed particular difficulty with shifting after accounting for group differences in nonverbal cognition. Controlling for social communication-a core deficit in ASD-eliminated group differences in EF performance. A modest association was observed between language (especially comprehension) and EF skills, with some evidence of different patterns between children on the autism spectrum with and without language impairment. Conclusions : There is a need for future research to examine the direction of influence between EF and language. It would be beneficial for EF interventions with children with ASD to consider language outcomes and, conversely, to examine whether specific language training facilitates aspects of executive control in children on the autism spectrum. Presentation Video : https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.7298144.

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4. Arunachalam S, Luyster RJ. Lexical Development in Young Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) : How ASD May Affect Intake From the Input. Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR. 2018 ; 61(11) : 2659-72.

Purpose : Most children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have below-age lexical knowledge and lexical representation. Our goal is to examine ways in which difficulties with social communication and language processing that are often associated with ASD may constrain these children’s abilities to learn new words and to explore whether minimizing the social communication and processing demands of the learning situation can lead to successful learning. Method : In this narrative review of recent work on lexical development in ASD, we describe key findings on children’s acquisition of nouns, pronouns, and verbs and outline our research program currently in progress aimed at further elucidating these issues. Conclusion : Our review of studies that examine lexical development in children with ASD suggests that innovative intervention approaches that take into account both the social communication and processing demands of the learning situation may be particularly beneficial. Presentation Video : https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.7324013.

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5. Iverson JM. Early Motor and Communicative Development in Infants With an Older Sibling With Autism Spectrum Disorder. Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR. 2018 ; 61(11) : 2673-84.

Purpose : A recent approach to identifying early markers of risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been to study infants who have an older sibling with ASD. These infants are at heightened risk (HR) for ASD and for other developmental difficulties, and even those who do not receive an eventual ASD diagnosis manifest a high degree of variability in trajectories of development. The primary goal of this review is to summarize findings from research on early motor and communicative development in these HR infants. Method : This review focuses on 2 lines of inquiry. The first assesses whether delays and atypicalities in early motor abilities and in the development of early communication provide an index of eventual ASD diagnosis. The second asks whether such delays also influence infants’ interactions with objects and people in ways that exert far-reaching, cascading effects on development. Results : HR infants who do and who do not receive a diagnosis of ASD vary widely in motor and communicative development. In addition, variation in infant motor and communicative development appears to have cascading effects on development, both on the emergence of behavior in other domains and on the broader learning environment. Conclusions : Advances in communicative and language development are supported by advances in motor skill. When these advances are slowed and/or when new skills are not consolidated and remain challenging for the infant, the enhanced potential for exploration afforded by new abilities and the concomitant increase in opportunities for learning are reduced. Improving our understanding of communicative delays of the sort observed in ASD and developing effective intervention methods requires going beyond the individual to consider the constant, complex interplay between developing communicators and their environments. Presentation Video : https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.7299308.

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6. Abdelaziz A, Kover ST, Wagner M, Naigles LR. The Shape Bias in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder : Potential Sources of Individual Differences. Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR. 2018 ; 61(11) : 2685-702.

Purpose : Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate many mechanisms of lexical acquisition that support language in typical development ; however, 1 notable exception is the shape bias. The bases of these children’s difficulties with the shape bias are not well understood, and the current study explored potential sources of individual differences from the perspectives of both attentional and conceptual accounts of the shape bias. Method : Shape bias performance from the dataset of Potrzeba, Fein, and Naigles (2015) was analyzed, including 33 children with typical development (M = 20 months ; SD = 1.6), 15 children with ASD with high verbal abilities (M = 33 months ; SD = 4.6), and 14 children with ASD with low verbal abilities (M = 33 months ; SD = 6.6). Lexical predictors (shape-side noun percentage from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory ; Fenson et al., 2007) and social-pragmatic predictors (joint attention duration during play sessions) were considered as predictors of subsequent shape bias performance. Results : For children in the low verbal ASD group, initiation of joint attention (positively) and passive attention (negatively) predicted subsequent shape bias performance, controlling for initial language and developmental level. Proportion of child’s known nouns with shape-defined properties correlated negatively with shape bias performance in the high verbal ASD group but did not reach significance in regression models. Conclusions : These findings suggest that no single account sufficiently explains the observed individual differences in shape bias performance in children with ASD. Nonetheless, these findings break new ground in highlighting the role of social communicative interactions as integral to understanding specific language outcomes (i.e., the shape bias) in children with ASD, especially those with low verbal abilities, and point to new hypotheses concerning the linguistic content of these interactions. Presentation Video : https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.7299581.

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