Linguistic negation in autistic and normal children

Young, severely maladaptive autistic children with some speech competence were compared to normally developing 3-year-old children of lower and middle class and 5-year-olds of lower class on negation tasks. All subjects were shown 12 sets of cards depicting negative contrasts designed to elicit semantic categories of nonexistence, denial, and rejection and were tested for production, imitation, and comprehension. Syntactic and semantic analysis revealed that autistic children were superior imitators and poor producers but showed skills in comprehension comparable to a 4-year-old's level of functioning. While retarded in some functions, the experimental group produced syntactic structures that were more rigid, suggesting the significantly greater use of imitation as a major strategy in linguistic coding.This work was done at the NYU-Bellevue Medical Center with partial support by NIMH Grant No. MH 07331 to R. K.     

Overselectivity,developmental level,and overtraining in autistic and normal children

Thirteen autistic children were compared to 13 normal children, matched to them in mental age, on performance of a visual discrimination task. Form, color, and size were relevant and redundant cues. The groups did not differ significantly in mean trials to reach criterion or in breadth of learning, and both groups increased their breadth of learning after 50 trials of overtraining. Form was preferred to color and size by both autistic and normal children. Within each group, rank on mental age was highly correlated with rank in breadth of learning. Verbal and nonverbal autistic children did not differ in breadth of learning or in dimensional preference. Even nonverbal autistics equaled the performance of their normal controls. Our results suggest that overselective attention is better understood as part of a general developmental lag in cognition in autistic children than as a specific deficit underlying psychotic behavior.This research was supported in part by NIMH Grant 11440, O. I. Lovaas, principal investigator. The authors thank Dr. Lovaas and Dennis C. Russo for their helpful criticisms of an earlier draft.     

A comparison of cognitive/neuropsychological impairments of nonretarded autistic and schizophrenic children

The performance of children meeting DSM-III criteria for schizophrenic disorder and infantile autism and of normal children (ages 7 years 10 months to 14 years 4 months) was compared on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, Rey's Tangled Line Test, Benton Judgment of Line Orientation, Digit Symbol Substitution Test, and Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. The mean performance IQ of the schizophrenic and autistic children was equal and in the normal range. The normal children were of average intelligence as estimated by the PPVT. As compared to normal children, both autistic and schizophrenic children were impaired on the DSST and RTLT. The autistic children had significantly lower scores on the PPVT than schizophrenic and normal children. The schizophrenic children made significantly more perseverative responses on the WCST than did normal children. They significantly increased their nonperseverative errors on the second half of the WCST, after having been taught the correct sorting principles. It is argued that in schizophrenia a core deficit in momentary processing capacity underlies the above performance pattern. In contrast, in autism the core cognitive deficit involves an inability to use language to regulate and control ongoing behavior.Preparation of this article was supported in part by a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Grant to Robert Asarnow, and NIMH Grant MH 30897 to the UCLA Clinical Research Center for the Study of Childhood Psychoses. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Michael J. Goldstein, Ph.D., who acted as reseach advisor to the first author over the course of this study; Delores Adams, who assisted us in data analysis; and Sara Lerner, who enthusiastically helped us in data collection. We also acknowledge the assistance of the staff of the Clinical Research Center for the Study of Childhood Psychosis at UCLA, as well as the many children who participated in this study, and their parents.     

Behavioral correlates of developmental expressive language disorder

The association of behavior problems with preschool language disorders has been documented extensively. However, researchers have typically failed to differentiate subgroups of language-impaired children, to use observational data in documenting the behavior disorders, or to study children at the youngest ages. Using a multimodal assessment, this study examined parent-child interaction and behavior problems in a clearly defined subgroup of language-impaired children, those with developmental expressive language disorder (ELD). These children exhibit a delay in expressive language compared with receptive language and nonverbal cognitive skills. Subjects were identified and studied at the youngest age at which the disorder can be assessed. A group of ELD children, averaging 27 months of age, was contrasted with a group of normally developing children, matched for age, sex, and receptive language ability. Groups were compared on observed parent-child interactions as well as maternal responses on the Parenting Stress Index, the Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory, and a behavior-related structured interview. ELD children, when compared with normally developing children, exhibited higher levels of negative behavior and were perceived as different by their parents.Portions of these data were presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Baltimore, April 1987, and at the annual meeting of the Society for Pediatrie Research, Anaheim, California, April 1987. This work has been supported by NIMH grant no. 1 R03 MH41603 to author Fischel, and by NICHD grant no. 1 ROI HD19245 to authors Whitehurst and Fischel. It has also been supported by grants of equipment from Commodore Business Machines, Inc., Koala Corporation, and NEC Telephones. We thank the Department of Pediatrics at the Nassau County Medical Center for the use of their facilities.     

Use of repetition to facilitate spontaneous language acquisition

The role of repetition as a facilitator of spontaneous language acquisition was examined in a 12-month longitudinal study of three children: John, Mindy, and Ashley. Imitation was first defined in a traditional fashion as the exact repetition of a model utterance, within five utterances, without changing the model except to reduce it. During the single-word utterance period, John entered words into his vocabulary by imitating them and then using them spontaneously, while the two girls did not. He also imitated longer utterances than he produced spontaneously while the two girls did not. At the same time, John showed the most rapid language acquisition of the three children. John did not use imitation, as defined, to enter new syntactic-semantic relations into his speech during the two-word stage. However, when the definition of imitation was broadened to include other kinds of repetitions such as repetitions with expansion, either of the child's own productions or of those of others, it was found that repetitions played a significant role in the acquisition of new vocabulary and new syntactic-semantic relations in two-word utterances.This article is based, in part, on a Ph.D. dissertation submitted to the Department of Psychology, University of Denver, in 1976. Portions of the article were presented at the Wisconsin Education Research Association, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, December 1–2, 1977. The research was undertaken while the author was an NIMH predoctoral fellow, 5F01 MH55918-02 MTHL, and was also supported by a Grant Foundation grant for graduate student research to Dr. Marshall Haith and a Spencer Foundation grant to Dr. Kurt Fischer.     

Imitation and social responsiveness in autistic children

Fifteen autistic children, ages 4–6 years, participated in the present study. Imitation and object permanence skills were assessed. Language and social behaviors were observed during free play. Children were also exposed to three interactive procedures that differed in developmental sophistication. The experimenter either (1) simultaneously imitated the child's actions, (2) modeled a familiar action, or (3) modeled a novel action. It was found that the autistic children who had a low level of imitative ability (Piaget's Stages 2–3) were more socially responsive, showed more eye contact, and played with toys in a less perseverative manner when the experimenter imitated their behavior than when the experimenter modeled either a familiar or a novel action. When the experimenter modeled a familiar as opposed to a novel action, these children were more likely to spontaneously imitate the experimenter. The autistic children with more highly developed imitation skills, however, responded similarly to all conditions. They also were generally more socially and verbally responsive. These results suggest that developmental status is an important variable in designing intervention programs for severely impaired children.We would like to express our appreciation to the autistic children who participated in the study, and to their parents, and to the staff of the T.E.A.C.C.H. Division, University of North Carolina for their help and cooperation. We would also like to thank Karen Cotten, Pete Giordano, Vickie Hall, Lee Hendrix, Shari Jernigan, Kevin Lumley, Cindy Seagroves, Sheryl Solomon, Kathy Stetson, and Jeannie Teasley for their assistance in data collection and coding, and Mary Lynn Eckert and Anne Stanford for their secretarial assistance. Cathy Dent provided helpful suggestions on earlier drafts of the paper. Support was provided by UNC Research Council.     

A MODIFIED INCIDENTAL-TEACHING PROCEDURE FOR AUTISTIC YOUTH: ACQUISITION AND GENERALIZATION OF RECEPTIVE OBJECT LABELS

A modified incidental-teaching procedure was used to increase the receptive language skills of autistic youth who had previously experienced lengthy institutionalization. At the time of the study, the two severely language-delayed children had recently been transitioned to a community-based group home. Receptive-labeling skills were taught for four sets of objects typically used in school lunch preparation. The percentage of correct, unprompted object identifications displayed by Youth 1 increased when the incidental-teaching package (gestural prompts, behavior-specific praise, and contingent access to lunch-making supplies) was sequentially introduced in a multiple-baseline design across sets of objects. These results were replicated with Youth 2. The youths' newly acquired language skills also generalized to a different setting (the dining room of the group home) and to a different activity occurring later in the day (a traditional sit-down, discrete-trial session). This research indicates that the linguistic skills of severely developmentally delayed autistic children can be accelerated by incidental instruction that is provided in the course of shaping other home-living skills.     

Do early lexical skills predict language outcome at 3 years? A longitudinal study of French-speaking children

Early language development is considered critical for children’s adjustment in school, for social adaptation and for later educational achievement. Despite the role of children’s receptive skills as a foundation for later productive word use, receptive language skills have received surprisingly little attention. The present research extends recent work on the prediction of preschool language skills by exploring whether a decontextualized measure of lexical comprehension can account for unique variance in preschool language skills above and beyond parent report and how early such a prediction can be made. For this purpose, 65 French-speaking children have been tested at 16, 22, 29 and 36 months.The results of the current study suggest that up to the age of two, although parent reports of lexical comprehension and/or production account for a portion of variance in later receptive, productive or general language outcome, they have less predictive validity than a direct measure of early lexical comprehension. By contrast, after age two, parent reported vocabulary production is the strongest predictor of later language production skills.     

Learning through observation: The effects of peer modeling on acquisition and generalization in autistic children

The purpose of this study was to systematically determine whether lowfunctioning autistic children [MA of approximately half of their CA or less] could learn through observation by the use of a peer modeling procedure. Since modeling is less structured than traditional one-on-one procedures, it was also thought that modeling might facilitate subsequent generalization of tasks learned through observation. Four autistic children were taught two receptive labeling tasks. One task was taught by a traditional trial and error procedure, while the other task was taught by a modeling procedure wherein the models were other autistic children. Results indicated that all four children learned through observation of their peer model. Additionally, generalization and maintenance of correct responding were superior when the children learned through observation rather than by trial and error. These results are discussed in terms of the modeling literature, generalization issues, and implications for designing teaching settings for autistic children.This research was supported by USPHS Research Grants MH 28231 and MH 29210 from the National Institute of Mental Health. The authors would like to acknowledge Paul Lizotte for his assistance.     

Preschool classroom conversations as long-term resources for second language and literacy acquisition

This study investigated relations between preschool talk exposure and immigrant first graders' second language literacy and oral skills outcomes. Participants in the study were 25 children with Turkish as their first language and Norwegian as their second, attending various multilingual and ethnically diverse preschool classrooms in Norway and videotaped during preschool group conversations. Group conversations were coded for vocabulary richness, discourse complexity and emergent phonics talk. Relations between the qualities of the preschool group conversations that the children participated in and their second language vocabulary, listening comprehension and code related skills outcomes 1 year later in first grade were examined. Preschool classroom vocabulary richness and discourse complexity predicted first grade vocabulary (receptive vocabulary and word definition skills), but not listening comprehension. No associations were found between preschool classroom emergent phonics talk and first grade code-related skills. The findings have implications for early interventions addressing reading comprehension.     

Correspondence between parents' reports on the Behavior Problem Checklist

Interparent agreement on the Behavior Problem Checklist (BPC) was assessed in relation to several potentially influential variables. Major findings indicated parent agreement to be of a moderate level, generally higher in nondistressed than distressed samples, lower on Personality Problem items than Conduct Problem items, very low regarding presence of specific behaviors, and importantly related to type of reliability index employed. Issues deserving additional research effort are discussed.This research was supported in part by NIMH Grant No. 2R01 MH25802 and by NIAAA Research Scientist Development Award No. 1K01 AA00027 to the first author.     

African American women's sexual satisfaction as a dimension of their sex roles

African American women's sexual satisfaction in heterosexual relationships was examined as a dimension of their sex roles. Responses to questions about sexual behaviors and interactions they preferred in primary relationships were selected from a larger study of a stratified random sample of 126 African American women. Three factors were identified: sexual responsiveness, sexual expression, and sexual interest and enthusiasm. The factors are described as profiles that may enhance or limit women's male-female sexual relationships. The implications of African American women's sexual satisfaction as an important dimension to understand in today's AIDS related sexual climate is discussed within a socio-cultural context.A modified version of this paper was presented at the American Anthropological Association, November 1987, Chicago, Illinois. The research was funded by The Center for Prevention and Control of Rape, NIMH Grant, R01 MH33603 and through a Research Scientist Career Development Award to the first author, K01 MH00269.     

Immediate memory for words from main and subordinate clauses at different age levels

A probe-latency task was used to assess accessibility to the words from the first and second clauses of four types of sentences. The sentences contained either independent clauses or main and subordinate clauses. The subjects were 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children, and adults. On sentences with no main-subordinate distinction, word recognition latencies were shorter for second clauses for all groups except 4-year-olds. On sentences with main and subordinate clauses systematically varied over position in the sentence, however, latencies were most often shorter for subordinate clauses, even when they occurred at the beginning of the sentence. The results indicate that a clause is not simply represented in abstract form rather than verbatim form once the complete clause has been heard, but instead the structural role of the clause, as well as other factors, influences accessibility to verbatim form. It is proposed that listeners frequently interpret an asserted main clause more readily than a subordinate clause. This comprehension strategy appears in different forms at different stages of development.This research was supported in part by NIMH Fellowship No. 1 FO2MH 57352-01 and in part by a Montclair State College Faculty Research Grant to the first author.     

Validity of the NIMH Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children: A comparison between psychiatric and pediatric referrals

The NIMH Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (DISC) was used to evaluate 40 psychiatric referrals aged 7–11 and 40 pediatric referrals matched for age, sex, race, and socioeconomic status. Each parent and child was interviewed separately using parallel versions of the interview, DISC-P and DISC-C, and parents completed the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). The psychiatric referrals had more psychiatric diagnoses and higher symptom scores than the pediatric referrals. Parent reports discriminated better between the criterion groups than child reports. In both groups, mild oppositional behavior and fears were commonly reported by parents, whereas mild separation anxiety, fears, and dysthymia were commonly reported by children. Attention deficit disorder, conduct disorder, and affective disorders were much more common among psychiatrically referred children. There was an association (x²=37.1, p < 001) between abnormally high CBCL scores and diagnoses derived from the interview with the parent, but the association between the CBCL and the child interview was not significant. Over all, the results support the validity of the DISC-P, and to a lesser extent that of the DISC-C, in discriminating psychiatric from pediatric referrals, at the level of both symptoms and severe diagnoses, but not at the mild/moderate level of diagnosis.This work was supported in part by NIMH Clinical Research Center Grant No. MH30915 and by NIMH Contract No. RFP-DB-81-0027. The second author is supported by an NIMH Research Scientist Development Award No. MH00403 and by a Faculty Scholar's Award from the William T. Grant Foundation. The authors are most grateful to Noelle Conover for her assistance in data analysis.     

The comprehension skills of children learning English as an additional language

Background Data from national test results suggests that children who are learning English as an additional language (EAL) experience relatively lower levels of educational attainment in comparison to their monolingual, English‐speaking peers. Aims The relative underachievement of children who are learning EAL demands that the literacy needs of this group are identified. To this end, this study aimed to explore the reading‐ and comprehension‐related skills of a group of EAL learners. Sample Data are reported from 92 Year 3 pupils, of whom 46 children are learning EAL. Method Children completed standardized measures of reading accuracy and comprehension, listening comprehension, and receptive and expressive vocabulary. Results Results indicate that many EAL learners experience difficulties in understanding written and spoken text. These comprehension difficulties are not related to decoding problems but are related to significantly lower levels of vocabulary knowledge experienced by this group. Conclusions Many EAL learners experience significantly lower levels of English vocabulary knowledge which has a significant impact on their ability to understand written and spoken text. Greater emphasis on language development is therefore needed in the school curriculum to attempt to address the limited language skills of children learning EAL.     

The relationship between theory of mind and metaphor: Evidence from children with language impairment and autistic spectrum disorder

Happé (1993) proposed that theory of mind (ToM) understanding was necessary for comprehension of metaphorical expressions. The current study investigated the role of both ToM and language ability in metaphor understanding. Ninety‐four children aged 8–15 years with communication impairments were grouped according to language ability and autistic symptomatology in the first instance, and then according to ToM performance. Their performance on a metaphor task was compared to 34 typically developing age‐matched peers. These analyses showed that only children with language impairment, with or without concurrent autistic features, were impaired on the metaphor task. Furthermore, possession of first‐order ToM skills did not ensure metaphor comprehension. Instead, semantic ability was a stronger predictor of performance on the metaphor task. These results are considered with reference to the view that ToM understanding is necessary for the comprehension of metaphor.     

A psychometric analysis of the Personal Attributes Questionnaire

The psychometric properties of the Personal Attributes Questionnaire were examined in independent samples of male and female high school students, college students, and adults. In each of the six samples a two-factor structure (masculinity/instrumentality and femininity/expressivity) paralleling the empirically derived scales was found. Additional factor analyses of negative masculine and feminine traits were reported. Discriminant analyses revealed highly significant differentiation between the sexes. The reliabilities (Cronbach alpha) of the unit-weighted scales in each sample were also satisfactory.Support for this research was provided by NASA Grant NSG 2065 (Robert L. Helmreich, Principal Investigator) and NSF Grant BNS 78-08911 (Janet T. Spence and Robert L. Helmreich, Principal Investigators). The article was prepared while the second author was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, with support from the Spencer Foundation, NIMH Grant 5T32MH14581-03, and the University of Texas Research Institute.     

Parental behavior patterns and conduct disorders in girls

Conduct-disordered (CD) girls, 9 to 11 years old, were compared to nonconduct-disordered (NCD) girls of the same age using parental reports about themselves and their children and child reports of themselves and their parents. Correlations were obtained between parental behavior patterns and the behavior patterns of the girls as perceived by three family members: mother, father, and the target child. The results indicated that (1) parents of CD girls were more hostile in some contexts than parents of NCD girls, (2) relationships between parental behavioral characteristics and children's behavioral characteristics were stronger and more numerous for mothers than for fathers, and (3) the children's perception of their own behaviors and the parents' marriages tended to correspond with their parents' perceptions. In general, the pattern of results suggests that, in terms of aggressive behavior patterns, female children may be modeling the behavior of their parents, particularly that of their mothers.This research was supported in part by a Grant-in-Aid of Research awarded to the first author by Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society, and NIMH Grant No. MH35340. Portions of this paper were presented at the 18th Annual Convention of the Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy, Philadelphia, November 1984.     

Direct versus indirect response-reinforcer relationships in teaching autistic children

One possibility suggested by the literature for maximizing the efficiency of behavior modification procedures concerns the relationship between target behaviors and their reinforcers. Therefore, in this experiment three severely autistic children were taught a total of six new target behaviors (in a multiple baseline design) employing two different response-reinforcer relationships: (1) those where the target behaviors were a direct part of the response chain required to procure a reinforcer (e.g., opening the lid of a container to obtain a food reward inside the container); and (2) those where the target behavior was an indirect part of the chain leading to the reinforcer (e.g., the therapist handing the child a food reward after the child had opened the lid of an empty container). In all cases, the results showed rapid acquisition only when the target behavior was a direct part of the chain leading to the reinforcer. The results are discussed in terms of several possible conceptualizations concerning efficient reinforcement contingencies, and in terms of their implications for teaching autistic children.This investigation was supported by U.S. Public Health Service Research Grants MH 28210 and MH 28231, and by U.S. Office of Education Research Grant G007802084 from the Bureau for the Education of the Handicapped. Portions of the results described in this article were discussed in a presentation at the 13th Annual AABT Convention in San Francisco, 1979. The authors are particularly grateful to Andrew Egel, Roberta Elman, Janis Costello, and Karen Britten, for their helpful comments, and to Jody Fisher and Gina Richman, for their assitance in the data collection.     

Comprehension,selective imitation,and the CIP hypothesis

The role of comprehension training in the selective imitation of indirect-direct object sentences was assessed for six preschool children. A modeling condition resulted in normal usage of indirect-direct object sentences for five of six subjects, but reversed usage was not obtained when modeling was reversed. Subsequent receptive comprehension training on normal and reversed forms of indirect-direct object sentences resulted in generalization to the productive mode. These results were related to an hypothesis about language acquisition in which selective imitation is a function of comprehension.