Our project highlights one of the primary areas of research within the Kansas Intellectual and DevelopmentalResearch Center— language and communication. Specifically, we focus on language and communication inchildren with autism and minimal verbal skills (less than 20 spoken words). Remaining nonverbal past the ageof 5 years has been considered a poor prognostic indicator for future language developments (Picket et al.,2009), yet few interventions have been developed to address this problem. The Specific Aims for this projectare (1) to further investigate a multimodal intervention for school-age children with minimal verbal skills—defined as less than 20 words spontaneously spoken, signed, or selected via graphic symbol selection—and(2) to identify significant covariates associated with differential responding to the intervention. The researchaddresses an unmet need to promote spoken word production in children who remain essentially nonverbalwell past the ages associated with speech acquisition. The project is also innovative because: a) it investigatesa multimodal intervention based on principles of phonotactic probability and neighborhood density incombination with augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), and b) it investigates novel predictors oftreatment response that are obtained through cutting-edge technologies. We propose that this intervention willhave better success than past interventions because we will provide increased input through speech, digitizedspeech and visual images and additional speech sound practice for words that are comprised of highfrequency sounds in the child’s repertoire. Extant speech sounds in each participant’s repertoire will beidentified using LENA digitized recordings. Vocabulary words will then be selected based on a child’s speechsound repertoire and principles of word learning—words with high probability speech sound sequences will beselected and taught with either our multimodal intervention or a treatment as usual condition. Responses tothese interventions will be evaluated using a Sequential Multiple Assignment Randomized Trials (SMART)design. We propose that different outcomes will be associated with individual and environmental predictorsidentified in our previous research. Individual predictors include verbal comprehension, imitation skills,adaptive behavior, nonverbal speech sound repertoire, and communication complexity. Communicationcomplexity will be measured with the Communication Complexity Scale (CCS), developed by the PrincipalInvestigator. Environmental predictors include language input to the child as measured with LENA recordingdevices. Results will determine if our multimodal intervention is more successful than treatment as usual forteaching word productions, but will also identify the individual and environmental profiles associated withdifferential outcomes. Our discoveries will lead to more focused clinical trial research and will informcustomized intervention practices in schools and clinics. Ultimately this line of research aims to improve thelives of children with autism and their families through enhanced communication skills.
Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC)
Autism Research Database (AFD)
