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Personal pronoun usage in maternal input to infants at high vs. low risk for autism spectrum disorder.

Angela Xiaoxue HeRhiannon LuysterSung Ju HongSudha Arunachalam
Published in: First language (2018)
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are prone to personal pronoun difficulties. This paper investigates maternal input as a potential contributing factor, focusing on an early developmental stage before ASD diagnosis. Using Quigley and McNally's (2013) corpus of maternal speech to infants (3-19 months; N = 19) who are either at high or low risk for a diagnosis of ASD (Quigley & McNally, 2013), we asked whether mothers used fewer pronouns with high-risk infants. Indeed, high-risk infants heard fewer second-person pronouns relative to their names than low-risk infants. We further investigated the contexts in which mothers were using infants' names. Our results indicated that mothers of high-risk infants often used the infants' names simply to get their attention by calling them. We suggest that high-risk infants may thus hear relatively fewer pronouns because their mothers spend more time trying to get their attention. This may be related to differences in social-communicative behavior between low-risk and high-risk infants.
Keyphrases
  • autism spectrum disorder
  • attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
  • healthcare
  • working memory
  • mental health
  • intellectual disability
  • pregnant women
  • physical activity
  • body mass index
  • climate change
  • human health