Maternal Responses to Communication of Infants at Low and Heightened Risk for Autism

[摘要] The current study investigated maternal responses to infant communication among mothers of infants at heightened risk (HR) for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and mothers of infants at low risk (LR) for the disorder at 13 and 18 months.Infants and mothers were observed during naturalistic in-home interactions and semi-structured play.By 18 months, HR infants demonstrated delays in developmentally advanced communicative behaviors (pointing, showing, words) as compared to LR infants.Regarding maternal responses, overall mothers of HR infants responded as frequently as mothers of LR infants.However, our data indicated that from 13 to 18 months, mothers of LR infants increased their responsiveness to non-word vocalizations while mothers of HR infants did not.In addition, mothers of both HR and LR infants were more likely to label the referent of developmentally advanced gestures (pointing/showing) than earlier emerging gestures (giving/requesting).These findings suggest that mothers may provide richer responses to more developmentally advanced communication.Thus, delays in infant gesture and speech could alter the input infants receive leading to potential cascading effects on language development.

[发布机构] the University of Pittsburgh