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Transitions to Intentional and Symbolic Communication in Typical Development and in Autism Spectrum Disorder

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Prelinguistic and Minimally Verbal Communicators on the Autism Spectrum

Abstract

We begin by reviewing research focused on the way in which the emergence of new forms of intentional and symbolic communication alters the typically developing child’s communicative environment. Our central thesis is that these alterations not only change the nature of the input that the child receives but also influence the availability of opportunities for learning that support future development. We then review what is known about delays and atypicalities in the development of intentional and symbolic communication in individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Based on these data, we suggest that these communicative delays and atypicalities have far-reaching, cascading effects that extend beyond the individuals themselves to impact the behavior of social partners, the communicative environment more broadly, and the course of subsequent development. We then present a conceptual framework that identifies ways in which delays in the emergence of basic, early emerging communicative behaviors – eye contact, gesture, and vocalization – may lead to delays in the emergence of the individual’s ability to initiate instances of joint attention and impact the caregiver’s sense of the child’s developmental level. These changes in turn may lead to a reduction in shared topics for communication and, therefore, to a reduction in instances in which linguistic input adapted to moments of shared attention is most effective in facilitating the early development of language. Finally, we conclude with some recommendations for research and clinical practice suggested by this framework.

Author Note

Preparation of this chapter was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (R01 HD073255) to JMI. We are grateful to Nina Leezenbaum, Jessie Northrup, and Kelsey West for discussion of the conceptual framework presented here. We would also like to dedicate this chapter to Virginia Volterra and to the memory of Elizabeth Bate s. Their groundbreaking research and the mentorship that they provided the first author laid the foundation for this work.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Although there is some work on symbolic and representational gestures and their development between 9 and 12 months of age (e.g., Acredolo & Goodwyn, 1988; see Capone & McGregor, 2004, for a review), and children exposed to a sign language from early in life readily acquire language in the manual modality (e.g., Meier & Newport, 1990), we focus our discussion of the transition to symbolic communication on the emergence of words.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Jana M. Iverson & Robert H. Wozniak

  2. Department of Psychology, Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA, USA

    Robert H. Wozniak

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  1. Jana M. Iverson
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Correspondence to Jana M. Iverson .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Schl of Educational and Profess Studies, Griffith University, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Deb Keen

  2. Department of Special Education, University of Illinois, Champaign, Illinois, USA

    Hedda Meadan

  3. University of Kansas, Department of Speech Language Hearing Sc, Lawrence, Kansas, USA

    Nancy C. Brady

  4. Department of Special Education, University of Illinois, Champaign, Illinois, USA

    James W. Halle

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Iverson, J.M., Wozniak, R.H. (2016). Transitions to Intentional and Symbolic Communication in Typical Development and in Autism Spectrum Disorder. In: Keen, D., Meadan, H., Brady, N., Halle, J. (eds) Prelinguistic and Minimally Verbal Communicators on the Autism Spectrum. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0713-2_4

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