Phonological Development in a Child with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Case Study of an Intervention

Authors

  • Pia M. Nordgren University of Gothenburg

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/jircd.v6i1.25

Keywords:

Language development, sound production, autism

Abstract

In this single case study with a multiple baseline approach, a five year-old Swedish boy, diagnosed with an autism spectrum condition, and having a bilingual background, was followed weekly for one year. In order to facilitate the acquisition of phonological contrasts and knowledge of symbolic representations, a training package with minimal pairs was gradually introduced. A corpus of the utterances in interaction with teachers and a speech pathologist was collected, transcribed, and analyzed. The results of the study showed a quantitative and qualitative development of sound production involving the use of new phonological feature types, new syllable constructions, and new words during the year. The delayed and deviant speech development, both concerning segments, syllables, and word boundaries in this child, is in line with studies that describe a deviant phonological development in individuals with autism.

Author Biography

  • Pia M. Nordgren, University of Gothenburg

    Pia Nordgren PhD student Department of Philosophy, Linguistics & Theory of Science University of Gothenburg Box 200 405 30 GOTHENBURG Phone: +46(0)31 786 43 92 [email protected]

References

Baron-Cohen, S., Leslie, A. M. and Frith, U. (1985), Does the autistic child have a ‘Theory of Mind’? Cognition, 21 (1): 37?46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(85)90022-8

Bartolucci, G., Pierce, S., Streiner, D. and Eppel, P. T. (1976), Phonological investigation of verbal autistic and mentally retarded subjects. Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia, 6 (4): 303–316. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF01537908

Bartolucci, G. and Pierce, S. (1977), A preliminary comparison of phonological development in autistic, normal and mentally retarded subjects. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 12 (2): 137–147. http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/13682827709011317

Bishop, D., Wong, M. M. D., Maley, A., Hill, W. and Hallmayer, J. (2004), Are phonological processing deficits part of the broad autism phenotype? American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B (Neuropsychiatric Genetics), 128 B: 54–60.

Bondy, A. and Frost, L. (2002), A Picture’s Worth: PECS and Other Visual Strategies in Autism. Topics in Autism. ERIC, Institute of Education Sciences.

Cirrin, F. M. and Gilliam, R. B. (2008), Language intervention practices for school-age children with spoken language disorders – a systematic review. Language, Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 39: 110–137. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/0161-1461(2008/012)

Cleland, J., Gibbon, F. E., Peppe´, Sue J. E., O´Hare, A. and Rutherford, M. (2010), Phonetic and phonological errors in children with high functioning autism and Asperger syndrome. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 12 (1): 69–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/17549500903469980

Diehl, J. J. and Paul, R. (2012), Acoustic differences in the imitation of prosodic patterns in children with prosodic patterns. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 6 (1): 123–134. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2011.03.012

Dziuk, M. A., Gidley Larson, J. C., Apostu, A., Mahone, E. M., Denckla, M. B. and Mostofsky, S. H. (2007), Dyspraxia in autism: Association with motor, social, and communicative deficits. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, 49 (10): 734–739. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8749.2007.00734.x

Dunn, D. M. and Dunn, L. M. (1959), Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test – III, San Antonio, TX: Pearson.

Engstrand, O. (1990), Swedish. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 20-01: 42–44.

Elert, C. (1989), [General and Swedish Phonetics] Allmän och Svensk Fonetik, Norstedts förlag AB, Stockholm.

Goldstein, H. (2002). Communication intervention for children with autism: A review of treatment efficacy. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 32 (5): 373–396. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1020589821992

Grela, B. G. and McLaughlin, K. S. (2006). Focused stimulation for a child with autism spectrum disorder: A treatment study. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 36 (6): 753–756. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10803-006-0122-1

Griffith, R. (1954), The Abilities of Babies, a Study in Mental Measurement, Worcester, MA: American Psychological Association.

Hadwin, J., Baron-Cohen, S., Howlin, P. and Hill. K. (1997), Does teaching theory of mind have an effect on the ability to develop conversation in children with autism? Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 27 (5): 519–537. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1025826009731

Hellquist, B. (1995), Phoneme Test (Fonemtest): Short version (Kortversion) (third edition), Löddeköpinge, Pedagogical design, (Pedagogisk design), Sweden.

Jakobson, R. (1968). Child Language Aphasia and Phonological Universal. The Hague, The Netherlands, Mouton & Co. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9783111353562

Johansson, I. (1988), [Language Development in Disabled Children 1] Språkutveckling hos Handikappade Barn 1, Studentlitteratur, Lund, Sweden.

The Karlstad Model, IAKM, International Association for the Karlstadmodel.

Koegel, R. L., O´Dell, M. and Dunlap, G. (1988), Producing speech use in nonverbal autistic children by reinforcing attempts. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 18 (4): 525–538. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02211871

Koegel, R. L., Camarata, S., Koegel, L. K., Ben-Tall, A. and Smith, A. E. (1998), Increasing speech intelligibility in children with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 28 (3): 241–251. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1026073522897

Levy, S. E., Giarelli, E., Lee, L-C, Schieve, L. A., Kirby, R. S., Cunniff, C., Nicholas, J., Reaven, J. and Rice, C. E. (2010), Autism spectrum disorder and co-occurring developmental, psychiatric and medical conditions among children in multiple populations of the United States. Journal of Developmental Behavioral Pediatrics, 31 (4): 267–275. http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/DBP.0b013e3181d5d03b

Ohashi, J. K., Mirenda, P., Marinova-Todd, S., Hambly, C., Fombonne, E., Szatmari, P., Bryson, S., Roberts, W., Smith, I., Vaillancourt, T., Volden, J., Waddell, C., Zwaigenbaum, L., Georgiades, S., Duku, E. and Thompson, A. (2012), Comparing early language development in monolingual- and bilingual- exposed young children with autism spectrum disorders. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 6 (2): 890–897. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2011.12.002

Plunkett, K. and Strömqvist, S. (1990), The acquisition of Scandinavian languages, Gothenburg Papers in Theoretical Linguistics, 59.

Rapin, I., Dunn, M. A., Allen, D. A., Stevens, M. C. and Fein, D. (2009), Subtypes of language disorders in school-age children with autism. Developmental Neuropsychology, 34 (1): 66–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/87565640802564648

Reynell, C. (1977), Reynell Developmental Language Scales, Windsor, England.

Rogers, S. D., Hayden, D., Hepburn, S., Charlifue-Smith, R., Hall, T. and Hayes, A. (2006), Teaching young nonverbal children with autism useful speech: a pilot study of the Denver Model and PROMPT interventions. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 36 (8): 1007–1024. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10803-006-0142-x

Roug, L., Landberg, I and Lundberg, L. J. (1989), Phonetic development in early infancy: A study of four Swedish children during the first eighteen months of life. Journal of Child Language, 16 (1): 19–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0305000900013416

Scheinkopf, S. J., Mundy, P., Oller, D. K. and Steffens, M. (2000), Vocal atypicalities in preverbal autistic children. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 30 (4): 345–354. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1005531501155

Schoen, E., Paul, R. and Chawarska, K. (2011), Phonology and vocal behavior in toddlers with autism spectrum disorders, Autism Research, 4: 1–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/aur.183

Schopler, E., Mesibov, G. B. and Hearsey, K. (1995), Structured teaching in the TEACCH system, learning and cognition in autism. Current Issues in Autism: 243–268.

Sigurd, B. (1965), Phonotactic Structures in Swedish. Lund: Berlingska boktryckeriet.

Sparrow, S. S. and Cicchetti , D. V. (1985), Diagnostic uses of the vineland adaptive behaviour scales. Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 10 (2): 215–225. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jpepsy/10.2.215

Steinberg, D. D. and Sciarini, N. V. (2006) An Introduction to Psycholinguistics (second edition). Harlow: Pearson Education.

Tager-Flusberg, H., Calkins, S., Nolin, T., Baumberger, T., Anderson, M. and Chadwick Dias, A. (1990), A longitudinal study of language acquisition in autistic and Down Syndrome children. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 20 (1): 1–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02206853

Valicenti-McDermott, M., Tarshis, N., Schouls, M., Galdston, M, Hottinger, K., Seijo, R., Shulman, L. and Shinnar, S. (2013), Language differences between monolingual English and bilingual English-Spanish young children with autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Child Neurology, 28 (7): 945–948. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0883073812453204

Wolk, L. and Edwards, M. L. (1993), The emerging phonological system of an autistic child. Journal of Communication Disorders, 26 (3): 161–177. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0021-9924(93)90006-V

Wolk, L. and Giesen, J., (2000), A phonological investigation of four siblings with childhood autism. Journal of Communication Disorders, 33 (5): 371–389. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0021-9924(00)00021-6

Published

2015-01-30

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Nordgren, P. (2015). Phonological Development in a Child with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Case Study of an Intervention. Journal of Interactional Research in Communication Disorders, 6(1), 25-51. https://doi.org/10.1558/jircd.v6i1.25

Most read articles by the same author(s)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 > >>