Families of autistic and dysphasic children. II. Mothers' speech to the children.

Abstract

This paper tests various hypotheses about deviance in the communication of mothers to their autistic children. The language of mothers of 13 autistic boys is compared to the language of mothers of 13 boys with developmental receptive dysphasia. The two groups of boys are of similar age, nonverbal intelligence, and language level. The language samples come from hour-long taped interactions between the mothers and their children in their homes. Aspects of maternal communication that are examined include: the amount of language used, the frequency usage of different types of utterances, the syntactic complexity of utterances, the grammaticality of utterances, the clarity of communication, and the tones of voice used. No differences were found between the two groups of mothers in level of language usage, pattern of functional interaction, or in overall clarity of communication. In conclusion, the findings of this study provide no support for the suggestion that autism is due wholly or in part to deviant patterns of mother-child communication.