School of Psychology
Trinity College Dublin
Mother’s Infant Directed Speech (IDS) in face-toface interaction with typically developing infants
and infant siblings (SIBS-A) of children with
Autistic Spectrum Disorder, aged 3 to 12 months.
Funded by IRCHSS
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Eye-contact; Contingent Reactivity;
Maternal Infant Directed Speech (IDS) ‘motherese’
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Critically important for infant development
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4 main functions:
◦ communication of affect;
◦ facilitation of social interaction through infant
preference;
◦ engaging and maintaining infant attention;
◦ facilitation of language acquisition.
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Critical importance of speech addressed to infants
during the preverbal period is well established.
The properties of that input are known to have
important & specific effects on language
development.
Mother’s vocal/verbal input & imitation rates are
predictive of later language development in both
typically & atypically developing children.
Yet little is known about the input received in this
early pre-verbal stage before 12 months.
Mother’s style of interaction (e.g., informative or
affective) shapes infant responsiveness
◦ strengthens either phonetic or prosodic qualities of
infant’s vocalisations
◦ impacts on frequency, complexity & intensity of
infant vocalisations
Equally, mothers’ style of interaction may have
developed in response to infants’ particular
characteristics
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In the context of mother-infant interaction,
throughout 1st year, many critical precursors
of socio-communication & language
development develop
◦ joint attention, pointing, looking behaviours,...
Behaviours often missing or impaired in
individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder
(ASD)
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Autistic infants can experience some deficits
in their linguistic environment
Parents report a lack/low rates of social
initiatives and responsive behaviours from
autistic infant, particularly toward the end of
the first year
This affords parents less opportunities for
responsiveness, tend to increase their
solicitation behaviours
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Prospective Video Analysis design:
18 mother-infant dyads (10 normally
developing infants, 9 infant siblings of
children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder ASD)
filmed every 4 weeks between the ages of 3
and 12 months during in-home face-to-face
interaction.
One TD infant and 4 HR infants subsequently
diagnosed with ASD.
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ASD is a highly heritable neurodevelopmental
condition
Familial recurrence risk of 18.7% reported
Evidence of early difference in at-risk infants
as well as in autistic children
Possible that a pattern of ‘disrupted’
interaction present between infant siblings of
children with autism and their mothers.
Babysibs worldwide consortiums
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Not that much known about the mothers of atrisk infants and the extent to which her
behaviour is influenced by:
◦ Interactions with the infants’ older autistic sibling(s);
◦ Risk-status: expectations/anxieties about the infant;
◦ The infant’s own patterns of initiating, attending and
responding behaviour.
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These infant siblings, at risk of developing a
behaviourally-defined disorder characterised by
socio-communicative impairments difficult to
reliably diagnose before 18 months, present
particular challenges for parents in interaction.
All speech & vocalisations transcribed (mothers
>15,000 utterances) & analysed
Used Observer XT software to analyze and code
mother-infant interaction
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facial expression
all vocalisations
eye gaze/looking behaviour
joint attention behaviours
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for each dyad over the course of the first year.
To compare maternal speech characteristics in
face-to-face interaction with infants at high
and low-risk for autism and to investigate if
risk status affects the composition and
complexity of maternal speech.
To investigate the development of a set of
behaviours and responses identified as
critical to language acquisition (BSID-III,
ESCS, Still-Face procedure).
What is known:
Mothers of children with ASD (compared to mothers of TD/DD children):
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lower rates of sensitive responding
refer more to themselves
name their children more often
use more directives
pose less questions
use more high-intensity approach behaviours
more prompts, both verbal and non-verbal, to get the child’s attention
Mother’s conversational style - not the cause of the infant’s difficulties but
parental behaviour has been shown to predict development of autistic children’s
communicative development & is an important factor to consider.
DEVELOPMENTAL CASCADE
Little consensus on associated outcomes, in particular in the case of ASD.
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e.g., frequent redirection and solicitation rather than following of the
infant’s focus of attention has been shown to hinder language
acquisition in TD children and to demand a shifting of attention that is
difficult for ASD children
but in early months, infants have also been shown to benefit from
directive structuring of their play
Kasari (2012) pointing and gestures that direct the child’s attention had
long-term beneficial effects on language development in autistic
preschoolers
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Johnson (2010) reported that maternal persistence in relation to
engaging the autistic infant’s attention seemed to promote joint
attention development
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More attention solicitations
More questions but clarification type (like
fathers?)
Less contingently responsive
Less names & labels
Less affirmatives & criticism/negatives
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Result of a less active, responsive infant?
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Density: mean WPM & utterance rate
Non-meaningful speech & vocalisations,10-13%
of all maternal input.
Verb tokens as proportion of total words, 1720%.
Noun tokens as proportion of total words, 21%.
Interrogatives 7-31%, not sig. between groups.
Modifiers very restricted at 3%.
50% of all clauses in present or progressive tense
for both groups; only 5% past tense.
Copula is main verb in 15-20% of all utterances.
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MLU sig. lower for high-risk group, p<.05.
Total word types sig. lower for high-risk group,
p<.01.
VOCD sig. lower for high-risk group, p<.05.
Different verb types sig. lower for high-risk,
p<.001.
Different noun types sig. lower for high-risk
group, p<.05.
Zero clause utterances sig. higher for high-risk
group, up to 80% of total input, p<.001.
Use of infant’s name in isolation sig. higher for
high-risk group, p<.05.
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Mothers selectively respond to and imitate infant vocalisations
Infants make use of this contingent social feedback to shape
their babbling.
At both 12 & 18 months, HR infants produced proportionately
more, developmentally less complex, vocalisations than the LR
controls.
HR mothers in turn were differently responsive to the speechlike quality of the vocalisations produced by their infant when
compared with LR mothers at 18 months.
HR mothers also imitated their infants’ vocalisations more
frequently than the LR mothers.
HR mothers may be implementing strategies of particular benefit
as evidenced in some aspects of the infants’ language and
cognitive outcome measures.
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Difficult to reliably and robustly identify behavioural markers at either individual
or group level for autism before 12 or even 18 months.
Parental report is crucial. May also be productive to try to locate markers in the
adaptive responsive behaviour of the adults who interact with these infants
continually.
By analysing those intuitive, non-conscious aspects of parenting that are
nonetheless critical for development we may be able, together with the red flag
behaviours identified in the infants themselves, to use maternal behaviours in
interaction to help identify dyads at-risk in a bid to intervene as early as possible.
Ask concerned parents about their style of interaction with their infant, specifically
with regard to a hyper-stimulating style, which is proposed is a response to an
under-active infant.
It may well be that the mother who feels something is wrong is basing this
intuition on her own behaviour with the infant, rather than on any specific
behaviour manifested by the child, or in response to a lack or depressed rate of
certain expected behaviours and initiatives.
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2nd aim: to analyse relationship between maternal IDS
functional style and infants’ cognitive, language and
socio-communicative development with a view to
assessing the predictive validity of maternal speech
functions for infant outcomes.
Few associations: increased incidence of attentionsolicitations addressed to the high-risk infants is not in
fact having a detrimental effect on developmental
outcomes as it appears to have for the LR infants and may
therefore have a place in intervention and training
programmes.
Reinforces need for fine-grained contextual analyses
before concluding that any particular style of interaction or
IDS is inherently negative or beneficial in its effects
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Only LR mothers’ responsive speech was positively associated with
overall language scores aged 12 months, particularly with receptive
language, and with initiating joint attention at 12 months.
However we interpret this association as a further reflection that the LR
infants are more active and engaged and so are provoking more
responsive speech from the mother rather than the mother’s speech
producing better outcomes for the infant.
Delays in infant gesture and speech could alter the input infants receive
leading to potential cascading effects on language development.
It is not the mothers’ usage of particular speech acts that facilitates
language but rather language development is facilitated only when the
child is actively engaged during the utterance.
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