Michigan State University, East Lansing, US.
Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, 316 Physics Rd., Room 105B, East Lansing, MI, 48824, US.
J Autism Dev Disord. 2024 Mar;54(3):1213-1220. doi: 10.1007/s10803-022-05567-2. Epub 2022 Jun 3.
Joint attention and imitation are thought to facilitate a developmental cascade of language and social communication skills. Delays in developing these skills may affect the quality of children's social interactions and subsequent language development. We examined how responding to joint attention and object imitation skills predicted rate of expressive and receptive communication growth rate in a heterogeneous sample of autistic children. Children's baseline skills in responding to joint attention uniquely predicted expressive, but not receptive, language growth rate over time, while object imitation did not significantly predict language growth rate over and above joint attention skills. Future research should examine the potential moderating roles of child age and developmental level in explaining associations between joint attention and object imitation and later language development.
共同注意力和模仿被认为有助于语言和社交沟通技能的发展级联。这些技能发展迟缓可能会影响儿童社交互动的质量和随后的语言发展。我们研究了对共同注意力和物体模仿技能的反应如何预测自闭症儿童异质样本中表达和接受性沟通增长率。儿童对共同注意力的反应的基线技能可独特地预测表达性语言的增长速度，但不能预测接受性语言的增长速度，而物体模仿并不能显著预测语言增长速度，超过共同注意力技能。未来的研究应该检查儿童年龄和发展水平在解释共同注意力和物体模仿与后期语言发展之间的关联中的潜在调节作用。
