Early Language and Communication Development of Infants Later Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Bibliographic record
Abstract
It is well recognized that delayed "first words" is among the most common presenting symptoms of autistic spectrum disorders (ASD). However, data on earlier language and communication development in children with ASD are limited to retrospective reports from parents and from home videos. In this study, we prospectively collected parent report data on early communication and language development in 97 infant siblings of children with ASD and 49 low-risk controls. Parents completed the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory--Infant Form at 12 and 18 months. Analysis compared 3 groups defined on the basis of diagnostic assessment at 24 months: (1) siblings with ASD (n = 15), (2) siblings not meeting diagnostic criteria for ASD (n = 82), and (3) low-risk controls, none of whom had ASD (n = 49). Children with ASD showed delays in early language and communication compared with non-ASD siblings and controls. At 12 months, the ASD group was reported to understand significantly fewer phrases and to produce fewer gestures. At 18 months, they showed delays in their understanding of phrases, comprehension and production of single words, and use of gestures. Siblings not diagnosed with ASD also used fewer play-related gestures at 18 months than low-risk controls, even when children with identified language delays were excluded. Overall, this prospective study confirms that delays in communication and language development are apparent early in life in children with ASD, and emphasizes that developmental surveillance should include monitoring for delays in gesture, which may be among the earliest signs of ASD.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".