Auxiliary Effects of a Nonverbal Social Communication Intervention on Verbal Expressive Language Among Toddlers With Autism

Children diagnosed with autism display impairments in social communication functioning. Parents of children with autism most commonly identify verbal expressive language delays as the primary concern. Intervention studies demonstrating effectiveness for improving outcomes for toddlers with autism tend to focus either on nonverbal social behavior, such as joint attention, or on verbal expressive language, but rarely on both. Although there are calls for efficient, cohesive interventions that effectively address these multiple outcome domains of functioning, there is little research to guide practice. Naturalistic studies document that soon after the emergence of joint attention, verbal expressive language emerges. Hence, parent-mediated interventions, which demonstrate effective promotion of joint attention in toddlers with autism, hold particular promise for experimental study of potential auxiliary effects on emergent verbal expressive language. This article reports effects of a joint attention-focused, parent-mediated intervention on subsequent emergence of verbal expressive language in toddlers with autism in a randomized controlled trial. Parent–child interaction videos were coded using a direct observational measure of emergent verbal expressive language of 90 toddlers with autism. Results showed that a nonverbal social communication focused intervention resulted in significant pre-post growth in single and multiple word utterances of toddlers in the intervention group as compared to those in the control group. Results provide preliminary evidence that parent-mediated interventions, targeting nonverbal social communication, can increase verbal expressive language. Implications for future research, policy, and practice are discussed.