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Infant Communication Across the Transition to Walking: Developmental Cascades Among Infant Siblings of Children with Autism

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Abstract

New motor skills can shape how infants communicate with their caregivers. For example, learning to walk allows infants to move faster and farther than they previously could, in turn allowing them to approach their caregivers more frequently to gesture or vocalize. Does the link between walking and communication differ for infants later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), whose communicative and motor development differs from their neurotypically developing peers? We prospectively followed two groups of infants longitudinally during the transition from crawling to walking: (1) N = 25 infants with no family history of ASD; and (2) N = 91 infants with an older sibling with ASD. Fifteen infants were later diagnosed with ASD, and 26 infants showed a language delay (but did not receive an ASD diagnosis). After learning to walk, infants without ASD or language delay showed considerable changes in their communication: They gestured more frequently, and increasingly coordinated their gestures and vocalizations with locomotion (e.g., by approaching a caregiver and showing a toy). Infants with language delay showed similar but attenuated growth in their communication. However, infants later diagnosed with ASD did not display enhanced communication after they began to walk.

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Notes

  1. We use identity-first language when referring to individuals who have a confirmed autism diagnosis. Growing evidence shows that autistic self-advocates, stakeholders, and scholars prefer identity-first language and find that person-first language perpetuates stigma through unconventional language (e.g.,Taboas et al., 2022). However, to be precise, we also use the term “infants later diagnosed with autism” or the abbreviation “EL-ASD” when referring to infants who received an autism diagnosis after data collection.

  2. We initially planned to examine infants’ word production separately from non-word vocalizations. However, the base rates of words were extremely low. Eighty infants never produced a word. Of the remaining 36 infants, 19 only said words during the final session. Given the severity of positive skew, infants’ words were collapsed with their non-word vocalizations.

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Acknowledgements

Kelsey West and Sarah Steward share joint first authorship. This research was completed in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degrees of Doctor of Philosophy (KLW) and Bachelor of Philosophy (SES) at the University of Pittsburgh. Thanks to Drs. Celia Brownell, Dawna Duff, Lisa Goffman, Klaus Libertus, Erin Lindblom, and Rakie Cham for their contributions to the project. Thanks also to the members of the Infant Communication Lab at the University of Pittsburgh for their many contributions to coding and data collection, and to the infants and families who participated in this research.

Funding

This study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (R01 HD41607 and R01 HD54979), with additional support from HD35469 and HD055748. During the preparation of this manuscript, K.W. received funding from the National Institutes of Health (F32DC017903).

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  1. Department of Psychology, Center for Innovative Research in Autism, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, USA

    Kelsey L. West

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA

    Sarah E. Steward, Emily Roemer Britsch & Jana M. Iverson

  3. Department of Psychology, New York University, 4 Washington Place, Room 406, New York, NY, 10003, USA

    Kelsey L. West

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L. West, K., E. Steward, S., Roemer Britsch, E. et al. Infant Communication Across the Transition to Walking: Developmental Cascades Among Infant Siblings of Children with Autism. J Autism Dev Disord (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-023-06030-6

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