Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Center for Autism and Related Disorders, Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Augment Altern Commun. 2023 Mar;39(1):23-32. doi: 10.1080/07434618.2022.2120070. Epub 2022 Oct 20.
The use of speech-generating devices (SGD) in early interventions for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can improve communication and spoken language outcomes. The purpose of this study was to describe children's responsiveness to SGD input modeled by a social partner during adult-child play interactions over a 24-week intervention trial and explore the effect of that responsiveness on spoken language growth. This secondary analysis consisted of 31 children with less than 20 functional words at study entry who received a blended behavioral intervention (JASPER + EMT) as part of a randomized controlled trial. Significant improvements were seen in rate of responsiveness to both adult SGD models and adult natural speech models; only rate of responsiveness to SGD models at entry was a significant predictor of frequency of commenting and was a more robust predictor of number of different words post-intervention. Lastly, at entry, children with more joint attention and language responded to SGD models at significantly higher rates. Attention and responsiveness to SGD output may be important mechanisms of language growth and children who have more joint attention skills may particularly benefit from use of an SGD.
在自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）儿童的早期干预中使用言语生成设备（SGD）可以改善沟通和口语语言的结果。本研究的目的是描述儿童在 24 周干预试验期间的成人-儿童游戏互动中对社交伙伴模仿的 SGD 输入的反应，并探讨这种反应对口语语言发展的影响。这是一项二次分析，共纳入了 31 名在研究开始时词汇量少于 20 个的儿童，他们接受了混合行为干预（JASPER+EMT），这是一项随机对照试验的一部分。研究发现，儿童对成人 SGD 模型和成人自然语言模型的反应速度都有显著提高；只有在干预开始时对 SGD 模型的反应速度是评论频率的显著预测因素，并且是干预后不同词汇数量的更有力预测因素。最后，在研究开始时，具有更多共同注意力和语言技能的儿童对 SGD 模型的反应速度明显更高。对 SGD 输出的关注和反应可能是语言发展的重要机制，具有更多共同注意力技能的儿童可能特别受益于使用 SGD。
