A Language Analysis of Parent-Child Storybook Reading with Typically Developing Preschoolers and Preschoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorders
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Publisher Description
Parents are strongly encouraged to read to their preschool children to facilitate language and literacy development. Book reading exposes children to new vocabulary, complex sentence structures, and a variety of story plots. Adequate exposure to these models requires the child to maintain joint attention during the book reading experience. Past research has shown that it is difficult for children with ASD to maintain joint attention, which could negatively affect parent-child book reading interactions. The current study examined the language use and joint attention of parents and children with and without ASD during book reading interactions. Six families participated in this study, which resulted in a total of six preschool-age children and 12 parents. Each parent was videotaped while reading an age-appropriate book to his or her child. Parents were instructed to read as they normally would. Following the book reading interaction, parents independently completed a literacy-based questionnaire. Videos were transcribed and analyzed for language use and joint attention. The questionnaires were informally analyzed to check for differences between the participant groups. During the book reading interactions, mothers and fathers of children with ASD produced a lower MLU-m, elicited less joint attention via verbal bids, and used a higher percentage of redirections and unrelated utterances. Parents of children with ASD were also found to delete words from the text more frequently than the parents of TD children. In addition, the children with ASD were found to respond to fewer questions and requests. Due to the small participant size, it is difficult to make any definitive conclusions based on the results of this study. However, this study did present meaningful differences between the participant groups, which causes one to question if the parent-child reading techniques suggested by the literature are enough for parents who read to their children with ASD. Future research should be conducted to discover if there are techniques that may be beneficial for children with ASD during book reading interactions.