Mothers’ lexical input in their conversations with children with autism spectrum disorders

Research on the structure and content of parental input to children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is an important, yet largely neglected area of study. In particular, it is not clear which input features are similar or different between children with ASD and typically developing (TD) children. We analysed transcripts of spontaneous conversations between six ASD children and their mothers, who were followed over a period of between 12 and 26 months, for common features in the composition and function of the shared lexical items in the mothers’ speech to their children with ASD. Results first indicated the small core lexicon shared by all the mothers (8.27%) made up a total of 78.1% of the mothers’ actual speech, similar to what’s been found in maternal speech to TD 2-year-old children. Results also showed that, in contrast to maternal speech to TD children, the core lexicon of the mothers of ASD children was composed of slightly more content words (particularly verbs) than function words (68.48% versus 31.52%). These results suggest that mothers restrict their choice of lexical items to a small pool of highly frequent words when conversing with their children, ASD as well as TD. The use of more content words in maternal speech to children with ASD may reflect these mothers’ explicit efforts to orient and direct their ASD children’s attention to an ongoing activity.